\L  1:1   Mur
\C Samuel Beckett's novel, \iMurphy\r, prepared for Prof. Rubin Rabinovitz,
\C Department of English, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, U.S.A.
\C See Michele Aina Barale and Rubin Rabinovitz, \iA KWIC Concordance to
\C \iSamuel Beckett's "Murphy"\r (New York, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990)
\N1 THE sun shone, having no alternative, on the
nothing new. Murphy sat out of it, as though
he were free, in a mew in West Brompton.
Here for what might have been six months he
had eaten, drunk, slept, and put his clothes on
and off, in a medium-sized cage of north-western
aspect commanding an unbroken view of
medium-sized cages of south-eastern aspect.
Soon he would have to make other arrangements,
for the mew had been condemned.
Soon he would have to buckle to and start
eating, drinking, sleeping, and putting his clothes
on and off, in quite alien surroundings.
\S  1:1   Mur
\N14 He sat naked in his rocking-chair of undressed
teak, guaranteed not to crack, warp, shrink, corrode,
or creak at night. It was his own, it
never left him. The corner in which he sat was
curtained off from the sun, the poor old sun in
\P  1:2   Mur
\N1 the Virgin again for the billionth time. Seven
scarves held him in position. Two fastened his
shins to the rockers, one his thighs to the seat,
two his breast and belly to the back, one his
wrists to the strut behind. Only the most local
movements were possible. Sweat poured off
him, tightened the thongs. The breath was not
perceptible. The eyes, cold and unwavering
as a gull's, stared up at an iridescence splashed
over the cornice moulding, shrinking and fading.
Somewhere a cuckoo-clock, having struck
between twenty and thirty, became the echo
of a street-cry, which now entering the mew
gave \iQuid\r \ipro\r \iquo\r! \iQuid\r \ipro\r \iquo\r! directly.
\S  1:2   Mur
\N15 These were sights and sounds that he did
not like. They detained him in the world to
which they belonged, but not he, as he fondly
hoped. He wondered dimly what was breaking
up his sunlight, what wares were being cried.
Dimly, very dimly.
\S  1:2   Mur
\N21 He sat in his chair in this way because it gave
him pleasure! First it gave his body pleasure,
it appeased his body. Then it set him free in
his mind. For it was not until his body was
appeased that he could come alive in his mind,
as described in section six. And life in his mind
gave him pleasure, such pleasure that pleasure
was not the word.
\P  1:3   Mur
\S  1:3   Mur
\N1 Murphy had lately studied under a man in
Cork called Neary. This man, at that time,
could stop his heart more or less whenever he
liked and keep it stopped, within reasonable
limits, for as long as he liked. This rare faculty,
acquired after years of application somewhere
north of the Nerbudda, he exercised frugally,
reserving it for situations irksome beyond endurance,
as when he wanted a drink and could
not get one, or fell among Gaels and could not
escape, or felt the pangs of hopeless sexual
inclination.
\S  1:3   Mur
\N13 Murphy's purpose in going to sit at Neary's
feet was not to develop the Neary heart, which
he thought would quickly prove fatal to a man
of his temper, but simply to invest his own with
a little of what Neary, at that time a Pythagorean,
called the Apmonia. For Murphy had such an
irrational heart that no physician could get to
the root of it. Inspected, palpated, auscultated,
percussed, radiographed and cardiographed, it
was all that a heart should be. Buttoned up
and left to perform, it was like Petrouchka in
his box. One moment in such labour that it
seemed on the point of seizing, the next in such
ebullition that it seemed on the point of bursting.
It was the mediation between these extremes
that Neary called the Apmonia. When he got
\P  1:4   Mur
\N1 tired of calling it the Apmonia he called it the
Isonomy. When he got sick of the sound of
Isonomy he called it the Attunement. But he
might call it what he liked, into Murphy's
heart it would not enter. Neary could not
blend the opposites in Murphy's heart.
\S  1:4   Mur
\N7 Their farewell was memorable. Neary came
out of one of his dead sleeps and said:
\S  1:4   Mur
\N9 "[Murphy, all life is f+igure and ground."]
\S  1:4   Mur
\N10 "[But a wandering to f+ind home,"] said
Murphy.
\S  1:4   Mur
\N12 "[The face,"] said Neary, "[or system of faces,
against the big blooming buzzing confusion. I
think of Miss Dwyer."]
\S  1:4   Mur
\N15 Murphy could have thought of a Miss Counihan.
Neary clenched his f+ists and raised them
before his face.
\S  1:4   Mur
\N18 "[To gain the affections of Miss Dwyer,"] he
said, "[even for one short hour, would benef+it
me no end."]
\S  1:4   Mur
\N21 The knuckles stood out white under the skin
in the usual way-+-that was the position. The
hands then opened quite correctly to the utmost
limit of their compass-+-that was the negation.
It now seemed to Murphy that there were two
equally legitimate ways in which the gesture
might be concluded, and the sublation effected.
The hands might be clapped to the head in a
\P  1:5   Mur
\N1 smart gesture of despair, or let fall limply to the
seams of the trousers, supposing that to have
been their point of departure. Judge then of his
annoyance when Neary clenched them again
more violently than before and dashed them
against his breast-bone.
\S  1:5   Mur
\N7 "[Half an hour,"] he said, "[f+ifteen minutes."]
\S  1:5   Mur
\N8 "[And then?"] said Murphy. "[Back to Teneriffe
and the apes?"]
\S  1:5   Mur
\N10 "[You may sneer,"] said Neary, "[and you may
scoff, but the fact remains that all is dross, for
the moment at any rate, that is not Miss Dwyer.
The one closed f+igure in the waste without
form, and void! My tetrakyt!"]
\S  1:5   Mur
\N15 Of such was Neary's love for Miss Dwyer, who
loved a Flight-Lieutenant Elliman, who loved a
Miss Farren of Ringsakiddy, who loved a Father
Fitt of Ballinclashet, who in all sincerity was
bound to acknowledge a certain vocation for a
Mrs\. West of Passage, who loved Neary.
\S  1:5   Mur
\N21 "[Love requited,"] said Neary, "[is a short
circuit,"] a ball that gave rise to a sparkling
rally.
\S  1:5   Mur
\N24 "[The love that lifts up its eyes,"] said Neary,
"[being in torments; that craves for the tip of
her little f+inger, dipped in lacquer, to cool its
tongue-+-is foreign to you, Murphy, I take it."]
\S  1:5   Mur
\N28 "[Greek,"] said Murphy.
\P  1:6   Mur
\S  1:6   Mur
\N1 "[Or put it another way,"] said Neary; "[the
single, brilliant, organised, compact blotch in the
tumult of heterogeneous stimulation."]
\S  1:6   Mur
\N4 "[Blotch is the word,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:6   Mur
\N5 "[Just so,"] said Neary. "[Now pay attention
to this. For whatever reason you cannot love-+--+-|
But there is a Miss Counihan, Murphy, is there
not?"]
\S  1:6   Mur
\N9 There was indeed a Miss Counihan.
\S  1:6   Mur
\N10 "[Now say you were invited to def+ine let us
say your commerce with this Miss Counihan,
Murphy,"] said Neary. "[Come now, Murphy."]
\S  1:6   Mur
\N13 "[Precordial,"] said Murphy, "[rather than
cordial. Tired. Cork County. Depraved."]
\S  1:6   Mur
\N15 "[Just so,"] said Neary. "[Now then. For
whatever reason you cannot love in my way,
and believe me there is no other, for that same
reason, whatever it may be, your heart is as it
is. And again for that same reason-+--+-"]
\S  1:6   Mur
\N20 "[Whatever it may be,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:6   Mur
\N21 "[I can do nothing for you,"] said Neary.
\S  1:6   Mur
\N22 "[God bless my soul,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:6   Mur
\N23 "[Just so,"] said Neary. "[I should say your
conarium has shrunk to nothing."]
\S  1:6   Mur
\S  1:6   Mur
\N26 He worked up the chair to its maximum rock,
then relaxed. Slowly the world died down, the
big world where \iQuid\r \ipro\r \iquo\r was cried as wares
\P  1:7   Mur
\N1 and the light never waned the same way twice;
in favour of the little, as described in section
six, where he could love himself.
\S  1:7   Mur
\N4 A foot from his ear the telephone burst into
its rail. He had neglected to take down the
receiver. If he did not answer it at once his
landlady would come running to do so, or
some other lodger. Then he would be discovered,
for his door was not locked. There
was no means of locking his door. It was a
strange room, the door hanging off its hinges,
and yet a telephone. But its last occupant had
been a harlot, long past her best, which had
been scarlet. The telephone that she had
found useful in her prime, in her decline she
found indispensable. For the only money she
made was when a client from the old days
rang her up. Then she was indemnif+ied for
having been put to unnecessary inconvenience.
\S  1:7   Mur
\N20 Murphy could not free his hand. Every
moment he expected to hear the urgent step of
his landlady on the stairs, or of some other
lodger. The loud calm crake of the telephone
mocked him. At last he freed a hand and seized
the receiver, which in his agitation he clapped
to his head instead of dashing to the ground.
\S  1:7   Mur
\N27 "[God blast you,"] he said.
\S  1:7   Mur
\N28 "[He is doing so,"] she replied. Celia.
\P  1:8   Mur
\S  1:8   Mur
\N1 He laid the receiver hastily in his lap. The
part of him that he hated craved for Celia, the
part that he loved shrivelled up at the thought
of her. The voice lamented faintly against his
f+lesh. He bore it for a little, then took up the
receiver and said:
\S  1:8   Mur
\N7 "[Are you never coming back?"]
\S  1:8   Mur
\N8 "[I have it,"] she said.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N9 "[Don't I know,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N10 "[I don't mean that,"] she said, "[I mean what
you told me-+--+-"]
\S  1:8   Mur
\N12 "[I know what you mean,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N13 "[Meet me at the usual at the usual,"] she
said. "[I'll have it with me."]
\S  1:8   Mur
\N15 "[That is not possible,"] said Murphy. "[I
expect a friend."]
\S  1:8   Mur
\N17 "[You have no friends,"] said Celia.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N18 "[Well,"] said Murphy, "[not exactly a friend,
a funny old chap I ran into."]
\S  1:8   Mur
\N20 "[You can get rid of him before then,"] said
Celia.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N22 "[That is not possible,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N23 "[Then I'll bring it round,"] said Celia.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N24 "[You mustn't do that,"] said Murphy.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N25 "[Why don't you want to see me?"] said
Celia.
\S  1:8   Mur
\N27 "[How often have I to tell you,"] said Murphy,
"[I-+--+-"]
\P  1:9   Mur
\S  1:9   Mur
\N1 "[Listen to me,"] said Celia. "[I don't believe
in your funny old chap. There isn't any such
animal."]
\S  1:9   Mur
\N4 Murphy said nothing. The self that he tried
to love was tired.
\S  1:9   Mur
\N6 "[I'll be with you at nine,"] said Celia, "[and
I'll have it with me. If you're not there-+--+-"]
\S  1:9   Mur
\N8 "[Yes,"] said Murphy. "[Suppose I have to
go out?"]
\S  1:9   Mur
\N10 "[Good-bye."]
\S  1:9   Mur
\N11 He listened for a little to the dead line, he
dropped the receiver on the f+loor, he fastened
his hand back to the strut, he worked up the
chair. Slowly he felt better, astir in his mind,
in the freedom of that light and dark that did
not clash, nor alternate, nor fade nor lighten
except to their communion, as described in
section six. The rock got faster and faster,
shorter and shorter, the iridescence was gone,
the cry in the mew was gone, soon his body would
be quiet. Most things under the moon got
slower and slower and then stopped, a rock got
faster and faster and then stopped. Soon his
body would be quiet, soon he would be free.
\L  2:10  Mur
\N1 Age. \B \B \B \B \B \B \B Unimportant.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N2 Head. \B \B \B \B \B \B Small and round.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N3 Eyes. \B \B \B \B \B \B Green.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N4 Complexion. \B \B \B White.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N5 Hair. \B \B \B \B \B \B Yellow.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N6 Features. \B \B \B \B Mobile.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N7 Neck. \B \B \B \B \B \B 133+4\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N8 Upper arm. \B\B \B \B 11\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N9 Forearm. \B \B\B \B \B 91+2\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N10 Wrist. \B \B \B\B \B \B 6\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N11 Bust. \B \B \B \B \B \B 34\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N12 Waist. \B \B \B\B \B \B 27\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N13 Hips, etc\. \B\B \B \B 35\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N14 Thigh. \B \B \B\B \B \B 213+4\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N15 Knee. \B \B \B \B \B \B 133+4\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N16 Calf. \B \B \B \B \B \B 13\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N17 Ankle. \B \B \B \B \B \B 81+4\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N18 Instep. \B \B \B \B \B Unimportant.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N19 Height. \B \B \B \B \B 5\T|f 4\T|i.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N20 Weight. \B \B \B \B \B 123 lbs\.
\S  2:10  Mur
\N21 She stormed away from the callbox, accompanied
\P  2:11  Mur
\N1 delightedly by her hips, etc\. The f+iery
darts encompassing her about of the amorously
disposed were quenched as tow. She entered
the saloon bar of a Chef and Brewer and had a
sandwich of prawn and tomato and a dock glass
of white port off the zinc. She then made her way
rapidly on foot, followed by four football pool
collectors at four shillings in the pound commission,
to the apartment in Tyburnia of her paternal
grandfather, Mr\. Willoughby Kelly. She kept
nothing from Mr\. Kelly except what she thought
might give him pain, i\.e\. next to nothing.
\S  2:11  Mur
\N13 She had left Ireland at the age of four.
\S  2:11  Mur
\N14 Mr\. Kelly's face was narrow and profoundly
seamed with a lifetime of dingy, stingy repose.
Just as all hope seemed lost it burst into a f+ine
bulb of skull, unobscured by hair. Yet a little
while and his brain-body ratio would have sunk
to that of a small bird. He lay back in bed,
doing nothing, unless an occasional pluck at the
counterpane be entered to his credit.
\S  2:11  Mur
\N22 "[You are all I have in the world,"] said Celia.
\S  2:11  Mur
\N23 Mr\. Kelly nestled.
\S  2:11  Mur
\N24 "[You,"] said Celia, "[and possibly Murphy."]
\S  2:11  Mur
\N25 Mr\. Kelly started up in the bed. His eyes
could not very well protrude, so deeply were
they imbedded, but they could open, and this
they did.
\P  2:12  Mur
\S  2:12  Mur
\N1 "[I have not spoken to you of Murphy,"] said
Celia, "[because I thought it might give you
pain."]
\S  2:12  Mur
\N4 "[Pain my rump,"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:12  Mur
\N5 Mr\. Kelly fell back in the bed, which closed
his eyes, as though he were a doll. He desired
Celia to sit down, but she preferred to pace to
and fro, clasping and unclasping her hands, in
the usual manner. The friendship of a pair of
hands.
\S  2:12  Mur
\N11 Celia's account, expurgated, accelerated, improved
and reduced, of how she came to have
to speak of Murphy, gives the following.
\S  2:12  Mur
\N14 When her parents, Mr\. and Mrs\. Quentin
Kelly died, which they did clinging warmly to
their respective partners in the ill-fated \iMorro\r
\iCastle\r, Celia, being an only child, went on the
street. While this was a step to which Mr\.
Willoughby Kelly could not whole-heartedly
subscribe, yet he did not attempt to dissuade her.
She was a good girl, she would do well.
\S  2:12  Mur
\N22 It was on the street, the previous midsummer's
night, the sun being then in the Crab, that she
met Murphy. She had turned out of Edith
Grove into Cremorne Road, intending to refresh
herself with a smell of the Reach and then return
by Lot's Road, when chancing to glance to her
right she saw, motionless in the mouth of Stadium
\P  2:13  Mur
\N1 Street, considering alternately the sky and a
sheet of paper, a man. Murphy.
\S  2:13  Mur
\N3 "[But I beseech you,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[be
less beastly circumstantial. The junction for
example of Edith Grove, Cremorne Road and
Stadium Street, is indifferent to me. Get up
to your man."]
\S  2:13  Mur
\N8 She halted-+-"[Get away!"] said Mr\. Kelly-+-|
set herself off in the line that his eyes must take
on their next declension and waited. When his
head moved at last, it was to fall with such
abandon on his breast that he caught and lost
sight of her simultaneously. He did not immediately
hoist it back to the level at which she
could be assessed in comfort, but occupied
himself with his sheet. If on his eyes' way back
to the eternities she were still in position, he
would bid them stay and assess her.
\S  2:13  Mur
\N19 "[How do you know all this?"] said Mr\.
Kelly.
\S  2:13  Mur
\N21 "[What?"] said Celia.
\S  2:13  Mur
\N22 "[All these demented particulars,"] said Mr\.
Kelly.
\S  2:13  Mur
\N24 "[He tells me everything,"] said Celia.
\S  2:13  Mur
\N25 "[Lay off them,"] said Mr\. Kelly. "[Get up
to your man."]
\S  2:13  Mur
\N27 When Murphy had found what he sought on
the sheet he despatched his head on its upward
\P  2:14  Mur
\N1 journey. Clearly the effort was considerable.
A little short of half way, grateful for the
breather, he arrested the movement and gazed
at Celia. For perhaps two minutes she suffered
this gladly, then with outstretched arms began
slowly to rotate-+-"[Brava!"] said Mr\. Kelly-+-|
like the Roussel dummy in Regent Street.
When she came full circle she found, as she had
fully expected, the eyes of Murphy still open and
upon her. But almost at once they closed, as
for a supreme exertion, the jaws clenched, the
chin jutted, the knees sagged, the hypogastrium
came forward, the mouth opened, the head
tilted slowly back. Murphy was returning to
the brightness of the f+irmament.
\S  2:14  Mur
\N16 Celia's course was clear: the water. The
temptation to enter it was strong, but she set
it aside. There would be time for that. She
walked to a point about half-way between the
Battersea and Albert Bridges and sat down on a
bench between a Chelsea pensioner and an
Eldorado hokey-pokey man, who had dismounted
from his cruel machine and was enjoying
a short interlude in paradise. Artists of
every kind, writers, underwriters, devils, ghosts,
columnists, musicians, lyricists, organists, painters
and decorators, sculptors and statuaries,
critics and reviewers, major and minor, drunk
\P  2:15  Mur
\N1 and sober, laughing and crying, in schools and
singly, passed up and down. A f+lotilla of
barges, heaped high with waste paper of many
colours, riding at anchor or aground on the
mud, waved to her from across the water.
A funnel vailed to Battersea Bridge. A tug and
barge, coupled abreast, foamed happily out of
the Reach. The Eldorado man slept in a
heap, the Chelsea pensioner tore at his scarlet
tunic, exclaiming: "[Hell roast this weather, I
shill niver fergit it."] The clock of Chelsea Old
Church ground out grudgingly the hour of ten.
Celia rose and walked back the way she had
come. But instead of keeping straight on into
Lot's Road, as she had hoped, she found herself
dragged to the right into Cremorne Road. He
was still in the mouth of Stadium Street, in a
modif+ied attitude.
\S  2:15  Mur
\N19 "[Hell roast this story,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[I
shall never remember it."]
\S  2:15  Mur
\N21 Murphy had crossed his legs, pocketed his
hands, dropped the sheet and was staring straight
before him. Celia now accosted him in form-+-|
"[Wretched girl!"] said Mr\. Kelly-+-whereupon
they walked off happily arm-in-arm, leaving the
star chart for June lying in the gutter.
\S  2:15  Mur
\N27 "[This is where we put on the light,"] said Mr\.
Kelly.
\P  2:16  Mur
\S  2:16  Mur
\N1 Celia put on the light and turned Mr\. Kelly's
pillows.
\S  2:16  Mur
\N3 From that time forward they were indispensable
the one to the other.
\S  2:16  Mur
\N5 "[Hey!"] exclaimed Mr\. Kelly, "[don't skip
about like that, will you? You walked away
happily arm-in-arm. What happened then?"]
\S  2:16  Mur
\N8 Celia loved Murphy, Murphy loved Celia, it
was a striking case of love requited. It dated
from that f+irst long lingering look exchanged in
the mouth of Stadium Street, not from their walking
away arm-in-arm nor any subsequent accident.
It was the condition of their walking away, etc\.,
as Murphy had shown her many times in Barbara,
Baccardi and Baroko, though never in
Bramantip. Every moment that Celia spent
away from Murphy seemed an eternity devoid
of signif+icance, and Murphy for his part expressed
the same thought if possible more strongly in
the words: "[What is my life now but Celia?"]
\S  2:16  Mur
\N21 On the following Sunday, the moon being at
conjunction, he proposed to her in the Battersea
Park sub-tropical garden, immediately following
the ringing of the bell.
\S  2:16  Mur
\N25 Mr\. Kelly groaned.
\S  2:16  Mur
\N26 Celia accepted.
\S  2:16  Mur
\N27 "[Wretched girl,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[most
wretched."]
\P  2:17  Mur
\S  2:17  Mur
\N1 Resting on Campanella's \iCity\r \iof\r \ithe\r \iSun\r,
Murphy said they must get married by hook or
by crook before the moon came into opposition.
Now it was September, the sun was back in the
Virgin, and their relationship had not yet been
regularised.
\S  2:17  Mur
\N7 Mr\. Kelly saw no reason why he should contain
himself any longer. He started up in the bed,
which opened his eyes, as he knew perfectly well
it would, and wanted to know the who, what,
where, by what means, why, in what way and
when. Scratch an old man and f+ind a Quintilian.
\S  2:17  Mur
\N13 "[Who is this Murphy,"] he cried, "[for whom
you have been neglecting your work, as I presume?
What is he? Where does he come
from? What is his family? What does he do?
Has he any money? Has he any prospects?
Has he any retrospects? Is he, has he, anything
at all?"]
\S  2:17  Mur
\N20 Taking the f+irst point f+irst, Celia replied that
Murphy was Murphy. Continuing then in an
orderly manner she revealed that he belonged
to no profession or trade; came from Dublin-+-|
"[My God!"] said Mr\. Kelly-+-knew of one
uncle, a Mr\. Quigley, a well-to-do ne'er-do-well,
resident in Holland, with whom he strove to
correspond; did nothing that she could discern;
sometimes had the price of a concert; believed
\P  2:18  Mur
\N1 that the future held great things in store for him;
and never ripped up old stories. He was
Murphy. He had Celia.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N4 Mr\. Kelly mustered all his hormones.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N5 "[What does he live on?"] he shrieked.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N6 "[Small charitable sums,"] said Celia.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N7 Mr\. Kelly fell back. His bolt was shot. The
heavens were free to fall.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N9 Celia now came to that part of her relation
which she rather despaired of explaining to Mr\.
Kelly, because she did not properly understand
it herself. She knew that if by any means she
could insert the problem into that immense
cerebrum, the solution would be returned as
though by clockwork. Pacing to and fro at a
slightly faster rate, racking her brain which was
not very large for the best way to say it, she felt
she had come to an even more crucial junction
in her affairs than that composed by Edith
Grove, Cremorne Road and Stadium Street.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N21 "[You are all I have in the world,"] she said.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N22 "[I,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[and possibly Murphy."]
\S  2:18  Mur
\N23 "[There is no one else in the world,"] said
Celia, "[least of all Murphy, that I could speak
to of this."]
\S  2:18  Mur
\N26 "[You mollify me,"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:18  Mur
\N27 Celia halted, raised her clasped hands though
she knew his eyes were closed and said:
\P  2:19  Mur
\S  2:19  Mur
\N1 "[Will you please pay attention to this, tell
me what it means and what I am to do?"]
\S  2:19  Mur
\N3 "[Stop!"] said Mr\. Kelly. His attention could
not be mobilised like that at a moment's notice.
His attention was dispersed. Part was with its
caecum, which was wagging its tail again;
part with his extremities, which were dragging
anchor; part with his boyhood; and so on.
All this would have to be called in. When he
felt enough had been scraped together he said:
\S  2:19  Mur
\N11 "[Go!"]
\S  2:19  Mur
\N12 Celia spent every penny she earned and
Murphy earned no pennies. His honourable
independence was based on an understanding
with his landlady, in pursuance of which she
sent exquisitely cooked accounts to Mr\. Quigley
and handed over the difference, less a reasonable
commission, to Murphy. This superb arrangement
enabled him to consume away at pretty
well his own gait, but was inadequate for a
domestic establishment, no matter how frugal.
The position was further complicated by the
shadows of a clearance area having fallen, not
so much on Murphy's abode as on Murphy's
landlady. And it was certain that the least
appeal to Mr\. Quigley would be severely
punished. "[Shall I bite the hand that starves
me,"] said Murphy, "[to have it throttle me?"]
\P  2:20  Mur
\S  2:20  Mur
\N1 Surely between them they could contrive to
earn a little. Murphy thought so, with a look
of such f+ilthy intelligence as left her, self-aghast,
needing him still. Murphy's respect for the
imponderables of personality was profound, he
took the miscarriage of his tribute very nicely.
If she felt she could not, why then she could not,
and that was all. Liberal to a fault, that was
Murphy.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N10 "[So far I keep abreast,"] said Mr\. Kelly.
"[There is just this tribute-+--+-"]
\S  2:20  Mur
\N12 "[I have tried so hard to understand that,"]
said Celia.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N14 "[But what makes you think a tribute was
intended?"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N16 "[I tell you he keeps nothing from me,"] said
Celia.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N18 "[Did it go something like this?"] said Mr\.
Kelly. "[\`I pay you the highest tribute that a
man can pay a woman, and you throw a scene.\'"]
\S  2:20  Mur
\N21 "[Hark to the wind,"] said Celia.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N22 "[Damn your eyes,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[did he
or didn't he?"]
\S  2:20  Mur
\N24 "[It's not a bad guess,"] said Celia.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N25 "[Guess my rump,"] said Mr\. Kelly. "[It is
the formula."]
\S  2:20  Mur
\N27 "[So long as one of us understands,"] said Celia.
\S  2:20  Mur
\N28 In respecting what he called the Archeus,
\P  2:21  Mur
\N1 Murphy did no more than as he would be done
by. He was consequently aggrieved when Celia
suggested that he might try his hand at something
more remunerative than apperceiving himself
into a glorious grave and checking the starry
concave, and would not take the anguish on his
face for an answer. "[Did I press you?"] he
said. "[No. Do you press me? Yes. Is that
equitable? My sweet."]
\S  2:21  Mur
\N10 "[Will you conclude now as rapidly as possible,"]
said Mr\. Kelly. "[I weary of Murphy."]
\S  2:21  Mur
\N12 He begged her to believe him when he said he
could not earn. Had he not already sunk a
small fortune in attempts to do so? He begged
her to believe that he was a chronic emeritus.
But it was not altogether a question of economy.
There were metaphysical considerations, in whose
gloom it appeared that the night had come in
which no Murphy could work. Was Ixion under
any contract to keep his wheel in nice running
order? Had any provision been made for
Tantalus to eat salt? Not that Murphy had
ever heard of.
\S  2:21  Mur
\N24 "[But we cannot go on without any money,"]
said Celia.
\S  2:21  Mur
\N26 "[Providence will provide,"] said Murphy.
\S  2:21  Mur
\N27 The imperturbable negligence of Providence
to provide goaded them to such transports as
\P  2:22  Mur
\N1 West Brompton had not known since the Earl's
Court Exhibition. They said little. Sometimes
Murphy would begin to make a point, sometimes
he may have even f+inished making one, it was
hard to say. For example, early one morning
he said: "[The hireling f+leeth because he is an
hireling."] Was that a point? And again:
"[What shall a man give in exchange for Celia?"]
Was that a point?
\S  2:22  Mur
\N10 "[Those were points undoubtedly,"] said Mr\.
Kelly.
\S  2:22  Mur
\N12 When there was no money left and no bill to
be cooked for another week, Celia said that either
Murphy got work or she left him and went
back to hers. Murphy said work would be the
end of them both.
\S  2:22  Mur
\N17 "[Points one and two,"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:22  Mur
\N18 Celia had not been long back on the street when
Murphy wrote imploring her to return. She
telephoned to say that she would return if he
undertook to look for work. Otherwise it was
useless. He rang off while she was still speaking.
Then he wrote again saying he was starved
out and would do as she wished. But as there
was no possibility of his f+inding in himself any
reason for work taking one form rather than
another, would she kindly procure a corpus of
incentives based on the only system outside his
\P  2:23  Mur
\N1 own in which he felt the least conf+idence, that
of the heavenly bodies. In Berwick Market
there was a swami who cast excellent nativities
for sixpence. She knew the year and date of
the unhappy event, the time did not matter.
The science that had got over Jacob and
Esau would not insist on the precise moment
of vagitus. He would attend to the matter
himself, were it not that he was down to fourpence.
\S  2:23  Mur
\N11 "[And now I ring him up,"] concluded Celia,
"[to tell him I have it, and he tries to choke me
off."]
\S  2:23  Mur
\N14 "[It?"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:23  Mur
\N15 "[What he told me to get,"] said Celia.
\S  2:23  Mur
\N16 "[Are you afraid to call it by its name?"]
said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:23  Mur
\N18 "[That is all,"] said Celia. "[Now tell me what
to do, because I have to go."]
\S  2:23  Mur
\N20 Drawing himself up for the third time in the
bed Mr\. Kelly said:
\S  2:23  Mur
\N22 "[Approach, my child."]
\S  2:23  Mur
\N23 Celia sat down on the edge of the bed, their
four hands mingled on the counterpane, they
gazed at one another in silence.
\S  2:23  Mur
\N26 "[You are crying, my child,"] said Mr\. Kelly.
Not a thing escaped him.
\S  2:23  Mur
\N28 "[How can a person love you and go on
\P  2:24  Mur
\N1 like that?"] said Celia. "[Tell me how it is
possible."]
\S  2:24  Mur
\N3 "[He is saying the same about you,"] said
Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:24  Mur
\N5 "[To his funny old chap,"] said Celia.
\S  2:24  Mur
\N6 "[I beg your pardon,"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S  2:24  Mur
\N7 "[No matter,"] said Celia. "[Hurry up and
tell me what to do."]
\S  2:24  Mur
\N9 "[Approach, my child,"] said Mr\. Kelly, slipping
away a little from his surroundings.
\S  2:24  Mur
\N11 "[Damn it, I am approached,"] said Celia.
"[Do you want me to get in beside you?"]
\S  2:24  Mur
\N13 The blue glitter of Mr\. Kelly's eyes in the
uttermost depths of their orbits became f+ixed,
then veiled by the classical pythonic glaze.
He raised his left hand, where Celia's tears
had not yet dried, and seated it pronate on
the crown of his skull-+-that was the position.
In vain. He raised his right hand and laid
the foref+inger along his nose. He then returned
both hands to their point of departure with
Celia's on the counterpane, the glitter came
back into his eye and he pronounced:
\S  2:24  Mur
\N24 "[Chuck him."]
\S  2:24  Mur
\N25 Celia made to rise, Mr\. Kelly pinioned her
wrists.
\S  2:24  Mur
\N27 "[Sever your connexion with this Murphy,"]
he said, "[before it is too late."]
\P  2:25  Mur
\S  2:25  Mur
\N1 "[Let me go,"] said Celia.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N2 "[Terminate an intercourse that must prove
fatal,"] he said, "[while there is yet time."]
\S  2:25  Mur
\N4 "[Let me go,"] said Celia.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N5 He let her go and she stood up. They gazed
at each other in silence. Mr\. Kelly missed
nothing, his seams began to work.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N8 "[I bow to passion,"] he said.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N9 Celia went to the door.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N10 "[Before you go,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[you might
hand me the tail of my kite. Some tassels
have come adrift."]
\S  2:25  Mur
\N13 Celia went to the cupboard where he kept
his kite, took out the tail and loose tassels and
brought them over to the bed.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N16 "[As you say,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[hark to the
wind. I shall f+ly her out of sight to-morrow."]
\S  2:25  Mur
\N18 He fumbled vaguely at the coils of tail.
Already he was in position, straining his eyes
for the speck that was he, digging in his heels
against the immense pull skyward. Celia kissed
him and left him.
\S  2:25  Mur
\N23 "[God willing,"] said Mr\. Kelly, "[right out
of sight."]
\S  2:25  Mur
\N25 Now I have no one, thought Celia, except
possibly Murphy.
\L  3:26  Mur
\N1 THE moon, by a striking coincidence full and at
perigee, was 29\,000 miles nearer the earth than
it had been for four years. Exceptional tides
were expected. The Port of London Authority
was calm.
\S  3:26  Mur
\N6 It was after ten when Celia reached the mew.
There was no light in his window, but that did
not trouble her, who knew how addicted he was
to the dark. She had raised her hand to knock
the knock that he knew, when the door f+lew open
and a man smelling strongly of drink rattled past
her down the steps. There was only one way
out of the mew, and this he took after a brief
hesitation. He spurned the ground behind him
in a spring-heeled manner, as though he longed
to run but did not dare. She entered the house,
her mind still tingling with the clash of his leaden
face and scarlet muff+ler, and switched on the
light in the passage. In vain, the bulb had been
taken away. She started to climb the stairs in
the dark. On the landing she paused to give
\P  3:27  Mur
\N1 herself a last chance, Murphy and herself a last
chance.
\S  3:27  Mur
\N3 She had not seen him since the day he stigmatised
work as the end of them both, and now
she came creeping upon him in the dark to
execute a fake jossy's sixpenny writ to success
and prosperity. He would be thinking of her as
a Fury coming to carry him off, or even as a
tipstaff with warrant to distrain. Yet it was not
she, but Love, that was the bailiff. She was but
the bumbailiff. This discrimination gave her
such comfort that she sat down on the stairhead,
in the pitch darkness excluding the usual
auspices. How different it had been on the
riverside, when the barges had waved, the funnel
bowed, the tug and barge sung, yes to her. Or
had they meant no? The distinction was so
nice. What difference, for example, would it
make now, whether she went on up the stairs
to Murphy or back down them into the mew?
The difference between her way of destroying
them both, according to him, and his way,
according to her. The gentle passion.
\S  3:27  Mur
\N24 No sound came from Murphy's room, but that
did not trouble her, who knew how addicted he
was to remaining still for long periods.
\S  3:27  Mur
\N27 She fumbled in her bag for a coin. If her
thumb felt the head she would go up; if her
\P  3:28  Mur
\N1 devil's f+inger, down. Her devil's f+inger felt the
head and she rose to depart. An appalling
sound issued from Murphy's room, a f+lurry of
such despairing quality that she dropped the
bag, followed after a short silence by a suspiration
more lamentable than any groan. For a
moment she did not move, the power to do so
having deserted her. No sooner did this return
than she snatched up the bag and f+lew to the
rescue, as she supposed. Thus the omen of the
coin was overruled.
\S  3:28  Mur
\N12 Murphy was as last heard of, with this
difference however, that the rocking-chair was
now on top. Thus inverted his only direct
contact with the f+loor was that made by his
face, which was ground against it. His attitude
roughly speaking was that of a very inexperienced
diver about to enter the water, except that his
arms were not extended to break the concussion,
but fastened behind him. Only the most local
movements were possible, a licking of the lips, a
turning of the other cheek to the dust, and so on.
Blood gushed from his nose.
\S  3:28  Mur
\N24 Losing no time in idle speculation Celia undid
the scarves and prised the chair off him with all
possible speed. Part by part he subsided, as the
bonds that held him fell away, until he lay
fully prostrate in the crucif+ied position, heaving.
\P  3:29  Mur
\N1 A huge pink na+evus on the pinnacle of the right
buttock held her spellbound. She could not
understand how she had never noticed it before.
\S  3:29  Mur
\N4 "[Help,"] said Murphy.
\S  3:29  Mur
\N5 Startled from her reverie she set to and rendered
him every form of assistance known to an old
Girl Guide. When she could think of nothing
more she dragged him out of the corner, shovelled
the rocking-chair under him, emptied him on
to the bed, laid him out decently, covered him
with a sheet and sat down beside him. The
next move was his.
\S  3:29  Mur
\N13 "[Who are you?"] said Murphy.
\S  3:29  Mur
\N14 Celia mentioned her name. Murphy, unable
to believe his ears, opened his eyes. The beloved
features emerging from chaos were the face
against the big blooming buzzing confusion
of which Neary had spoken so highly. He
closed his eyes and opened his arms. She sank
down athwart his breast, their heads were side
by side on the pillow but facing opposite ways,
his f+ingers strayed through her yellow hair. It
was the short circuit so earnestly desired by
Neary, the glare of pursuit and f+light extinguished.
\S  3:29  Mur
\N25 In the morning he described in simple language
how he came to be in that extraordinary position.
Having gone to sleep, though sleep was hardly
the word, in the chair, the next thing was he
\P  3:30  Mur
\N1 was having a heart attack. When this happened
when he was normally in bed, nine times out
of ten his struggles to subdue it landed him
on the f+loor. It was therefore not surprising,
given his trussed condition, that on this occasion
they had caused the entire machine to turn
turtle.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N8 "[But who tied you up?"] said Celia.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N9 She knew nothing of this recreation, in which
Murphy had not felt the need to indulge while
she was with him. He now gave her a full
and frank account of its unique features.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N13 "[I was just getting it going when you rang
up,"] he said.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N15 Nor did she know anything of his heart attacks,
which had not troubled him while she was with
him. He now told her all about them, keeping
back nothing that might alarm her.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N19 "[So you see,"] he said, "[what a difference
your staying with me makes."]
\S  3:30  Mur
\N21 Celia turned her face to the window. Clouds
were moving rapidly across the sky. Mr\. Kelly
would be crowing.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N24 "[My bag is on the f+loor your side,"] she said.
\S  3:30  Mur
\N25 The fall on the landing had cracked the
mirror set in the f+lap. She stif+led a cry, averted
her head and handed him a large black envelope
with the title in letters of various colours.
\P  3:31  Mur
\S  3:31  Mur
\N1 "[What you told me to get,"] she said.
\S  3:31  Mur
\N2 She felt him take it from her. When after
some little time he still had not spoken nor
made any movement she turned her head to
see was anything amiss. All the colour (yellow)
had ebbed from his face, leaving it ashen. A
pale strand of blood scoring the jaw illustrated
this neap. He kept her waiting a little
longer and then said, in a voice unfamiliar to
her:
\S  3:31  Mur
\N11 "[My life-warrant. Thank you."]
\S  3:31  Mur
\N12 It struck her that a merely indolent man
would not be so affected by the prospect of
employment.
\S  3:31  Mur
\N15 "[My little bull of incommunication,"] he
said, "[signed not with lead but with a jossy's
spittle. Thank you."]
\S  3:31  Mur
\N18 Celia, hardening her heart, passed him a
hairpin. Murphy's instinct was to treat this
dun as he had those showered upon him in the
days when he used to enjoy an income, namely,
steam it open, marvel at its extravagance and
return it undelivered. But then he had not
been in bed with the collector.
\S  3:31  Mur
\N25 "[Why the black envelope,"] she said, "[and
the different-coloured letters?"]
\S  3:31  Mur
\N27 "[Because Mercury,"] said Murphy, "[god of
thieves, planet \ipar\r \iexcellence\r and mine, has no
\P  3:32  Mur
\N1 f+ixed colour."] He spread out the sheet folded
in sixteen. "[And because this is blackmail."]
\S  3:32  Mur
\N3 THEMA COELI
\iWith\r \iDelineations\r
\iCompiled\r
\iBy\r
RAMASWAMI KRISHNASWAMI NARAYANASWAMI SUK
\iGenethliac\r
\iFamous\r \ithroughout\r \iCivilised\r \iWorld\r \iand\r \iIrish\r \iFree\r \iState\r
\S  3:32  Mur
\N10 "[\iThen\r \iI\r \idefy\r \iyou\r, \iStars\r."]
\S  3:32  Mur
\N11 THE GOAT
\S  3:32  Mur
\N12 At time of Birth of this Native four degrees of
the GOAT was rising, his highest attributes being
Soul, Emotion, Clairaudience and Silence. Few
Minds are better concocted than this Native's.
\S  3:32  Mur
\N16 The Moon twenty-three degrees of the Serpent
promotes great Magical Ability of the Eye, to which
the lunatic would easy succumb. Avoid exhaustion
by speech. Intense Love nature prominent, rarely
suspicioning the Nasty, with inclinations to Purity.
When Sensuality rules there is danger of Fits.
\S  3:32  Mur
\N22 Mars having just set in the East denotes a great
desire to engage in some pursuit, yet not. There
has been persons of this description known to have
expressed a wish to be in two places at a time.
\S  3:32  Mur
\N26 When Health is below par, Regret may be entertained.
May be termed a law-abiding character
having a superior appearance. Should avoid drugs
and resort to Harmony. Great care should be used
in dealing with publishers, quadrupeds and tropical
\P  3:33  Mur
\N1 swamps, as these may terminate unprof+itably for the
Native.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N3 Mercury sesquiquadrate with the Anarete is most
malef+ic and will greatly conduce to Success terminating
in the height of Glory, which may injure Native's
prospects.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N7 The Square of Moon and Solar Orb aff+licts the
Hyleg. Herschel in Aquarius stops the Water and he
should guard against this. Neptune and Venus in
the Bull denotes dealings with the Females only
medium developed or of low organic quality. Companions
or matrimonial Mate are recommended to
be born under a f+iery triplicity, when the Bowman
should permit of a small family.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N15 With regards to a Career, the Native should inspire
and lead, as go between, promoter, detective, custodian,
pioneer or, if possible, explorer, his motto
in business being large prof+its and a quick turnover.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N19 The Native should guard against Bright's disease
and Grave's disease, also pains in the neck and feet.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N21 Lucky Gems. Amethyst and Diamond. To ensure
Success the Native should sport.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N23 Lucky Colours. Lemon. To avert Calamity the
Native should have a dash in apparel, also a squeeze
in home decorations.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N26 Lucky Days. Sunday. To attract the maximum
Success the Native should begin new ventures.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N28 Lucky Numbers. 4. The Native should commence
new enterprises, for in so doing lies just that
difference between Success and Calamity.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N31 Lucky Years. 1936 and 1990. Successful and
prosperous, though not without calamities and setbacks.
\S  3:33  Mur
\N34 "[Is it even so,"] said Murphy, his yellow all
\P  3:34  Mur
\N1 revived by these prognostications. "[Pandit Suk
has never done anything better."]
\S  3:34  Mur
\N3 "[Can you work now after that?"] said Celia.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N4 "[Certainly I can,"] said Murphy. "[The very
f+irst fourth to fall on a Sunday in 1936 I begin.
I put on my gems and off I go, to custode,
detect, explore, pioneer, promote or pimp, as
occasion may arise."]
\S  3:34  Mur
\N9 "[And in the meantime?"] said Celia.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N10 "[In the meantime,"] said Murphy, "[I must
just watch out for f+its, publishers, quadrupeds,
the stone, Bright's-+--+-"]
\S  3:34  Mur
\N13 She gave a cry of despair intense while it
lasted, then f+inished and done with, like an
infant's.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N16 "[How you can be such a fool and a brute,"]
she said, and did not bother to f+inish.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N18 "[But you wouldn't have me go against the
diagram,"] said Murphy, "[surely to God."]
\S  3:34  Mur
\N20 "[A fool and a brute,"] she said.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N21 "[Surely that is rather severe,"] said Murphy.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N22 "[You tell me to get you this .+.+. this .+.+."]
\S  3:34  Mur
\N23 "[Corpus of deterrents,"] said Murphy.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N24 "[So that we can be together, and then you
go and twist it into a .+.+. into a .+.+."]
\S  3:34  Mur
\N26 "[Separation order,"] said Murphy. Few minds
were better concocted than this native's.
\S  3:34  Mur
\N28 Celia opened her mouth to proceed, closed
\P  3:35  Mur
\N1 it without having done so. She despatched her
hands on the gesture that Neary had made
such a botch of at the thought of Miss Dwyer,
and resolved it quite legitimately, as it seemed
to Murphy, by dropping them back into their
original position. Now she had nobody, except
possibly Mr\. Kelly. She again opened and
closed her mouth, then began the slow business
of going.
\S  3:35  Mur
\N10 "[You are not going,"] said Murphy.
\S  3:35  Mur
\N11 "[Before I'm kicked out,"] said Celia.
\S  3:35  Mur
\N12 "[But what is the good of going merely in
body?"] said Murphy, thereby giving the conversation
a twist that brought it within her
powers of comment.
\S  3:35  Mur
\N16 "[You are too modest,"] she said.
\S  3:35  Mur
\N17 "[Oh, do not let us fence,"] said Murphy,
"[at least let it never be said that we fenced."]
\S  3:35  Mur
\N19 "[I go as best I can,"] she said, "[the same
as I went last time."]
\S  3:35  Mur
\N21 It really did look as though she were going,
at her present rate of adjustment she would be
gone in twenty minutes or half an hour. Already
she was at work on her face.
\S  3:35  Mur
\N25 "[I won't come back,"] she said. "[I won't
open your letters. I'll move my pitch."]
\S  3:35  Mur
\N27 Convinced he had hardened his heart and
would let her go, she was taking her time.
\P  3:36  Mur
\S  3:36  Mur
\N1 "[I'll be sorry I met you,"] she said.
\S  3:36  Mur
\N2 "[\iMet\r me!"] said Murphy. "[Met is magnif+icent."]
\S  3:36  Mur
\N4 He thought it wiser not to capitulate until
it was certain that she would not. In the
meantime, what about a small outburst. It
could do no harm, it might do good. He did
not feel really up to it, he knew that long before
the end he would wish he had not begun. But
it was perhaps better than lying there silent,
watching her lick her lips, and waiting. He
launched out.
\S  3:36  Mur
\N13 "[This love with a function gives me a pain
in the neck-+--+-"]
\S  3:36  Mur
\N15 "[Not in the feet?"] said Celia.
\S  3:36  Mur
\N16 "[What do you love?"] said Murphy. "[Me
as I am. You can want what does not exist,
you can't love it."] This came well from Murphy.
"[Then why are you all out to change me?
So that you won't have to love me,"] the voice
rising here to a note that did him credit, "[so
that you won't be condemned to love me, so
that you'll be reprieved from loving me."] He
was anxious to make his meaning clear.
"[Women are all the same bloody same, you
can't love, you can't stay the course, the only
feeling you can stand is being felt, you can't
love for f+ive minutes without wanting it abolished
\P  3:37  Mur
\N1 in brats and house bloody wifery. My God,
how I hate the charVenus and her sausage
and mash sex."]
\S  3:37  Mur
\N4 Celia put a foot to the ground.
\S  3:37  Mur
\N5 "[Avoid exhaustion by speech,"] she said.
\S  3:37  Mur
\N6 "[Have I wanted to change you? Have I
pestered you to begin things that don't belong
to you and stop things that do? How can I
care what you DO?"]
\S  3:37  Mur
\N10 "[I am what I do,"] said Celia.
\S  3:37  Mur
\N11 "[No,"] said Murphy. "[You do what you
are, you do a fraction of what you are, you
suffer a dreary ooze of your being into doing."]
He threw his voice into an infant's whinge.
"[\`I cudden do annyting, Maaaammy.\' That
kind of doing. Unavoidable and tedious."]
\S  3:37  Mur
\N17 Celia was now fully seated on the edge of
the bed, her back turned to him, making fast
her Bollitoes.
\S  3:37  Mur
\N20 "[I have heard bilge,"] she said, and did not
bother to f+inish.
\S  3:37  Mur
\N22 "[Hear a little more,"] said Murphy, "[and
then I expire. If I had to work out what you
are from what you do, you could skip out of here
now and joy be with you. First of all you
starve me into terms that are all yours but the
jossy, then you won't abide by them. The
arrangement is that I enter the jaws of a job
\P  3:38  Mur
\N1 according to the celestial prescriptions of Professor Suk,
then when I won't go against them
you start to walk out on me. Is that the way
you respect an agreement? What more can
I do?"]
\S  3:38  Mur
\N6 He closed his eyes and fell back. It was
not his habit to make out cases for himself.
An atheist chipping the deity was not more
senseless than Murphy defending his courses
of inaction, as he did not require to be told.
He had been carried away by his passion for
Celia and by a most curious feeling that he
should not collapse without at least the form
of a struggle. This grisly relic from the days
of nuts, balls and sparrows astonished himself.
To die f+ighting was the perfect antithesis of
his whole practice, faith and intention.
\S  3:38  Mur
\N18 He heard her rise and go to the window,
then come and stand at the foot of the bed.
So far from opening his eyes he sucked in his
cheeks. Was she perhaps subject to feelings of
compassion?
\S  3:38  Mur
\N23 "[I'll tell you what more you can do,"] she
said. "[You can get up out of that bed,
make yourself decent and walk the streets for
work."]
\S  3:38  Mur
\N27 The gentle passion. Murphy lost all his
yellow again.
\P  3:39  Mur
\S  3:39  Mur
\N1 "[The streets!"] he murmured. "[Father
forgive her."]
\S  3:39  Mur
\N3 He heard her go to the door.
\S  3:39  Mur
\N4 "[Not the slightest idea,"] he murmured, "[of
what her words mean. No more insight into
their implications than a parrot into its profanities."]
\S  3:39  Mur
\N8 As he seemed likely to go on mumbling and
marvelling to himself for some time, Celia said
good-bye and opened the door.
\S  3:39  Mur
\N11 "[You don't know what you are saying,"]
said Murphy. "[Let me tell you what you
are saying. Close the door."]
\S  3:39  Mur
\N14 Celia closed the door but kept her hand on
the handle.
\S  3:39  Mur
\N16 "[Sit on the bed,"] said Murphy.
\S  3:39  Mur
\N17 "[No,"] said Celia.
\S  3:39  Mur
\N18 "[I can't talk against space,"] said Murphy,
"[my fourth highest attribute is silence. Sit on
the bed."]
\S  3:39  Mur
\N21 The tone was that adopted by exhibitionists
for their last words on earth. Celia sat on the
bed. He opened his eyes, cold and unwavering
as a gull's, and with great magical ability sunk
their shafts into hers, greener than he had ever
seen them and more hopeless than he had ever
seen anybody's.
\S  3:39  Mur
\N28 "[What have I now?"] he said. "[I distinguish.
\P  3:40  Mur
\N1 You, my body and my mind."] He
paused for this monstrous proposition to be
granted. Celia did not hesitate, she might
never have occasion to grant him anything
again. "[In the mercantile gehenna,"] he said,
"[to which your words invite me, one of these
will go, or two, or all. If you, then you only;
if my body, then you also; if my mind, then all.
Now?"]
\S  3:40  Mur
\N10 She looked at him helplessly. He seemed
serious. But he had seemed serious when he
spoke of putting on his gems and lemon, etc\.
She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy,
spattered with words that went dead as soon as
they sounded; each word obliterated, before
it had time to make sense, by the word that
came next; so that in the end she did not know
what had been said. It was like diff+icult music
heard for the f+irst time.
\S  3:40  Mur
\N20 "[You twist everything,"] she said. "[Work
needn't mean any of that."]
\S  3:40  Mur
\N22 "[Then is the position unchanged?"] said
Murphy. "[Either I do what you want or you
walk out. Is that it?"]
\S  3:40  Mur
\N25 She made to rise, he pinioned her wrists.
\S  3:40  Mur
\N26 "[Let me go,"] said Celia.
\S  3:40  Mur
\N27 "[Is it?"] said Murphy.
\S  3:40  Mur
\N28 "[Let me go,"] said Celia.
\P  3:41  Mur
\S  3:41  Mur
\N1 He let her go. She rose and went to the
window. The sky, cool, bright, full of movement,
anointed her eyes, reminded her of Ireland.
\S  3:41  Mur
\N4 "[Yes or no?"] said Murphy. The eternal
tautology.
\S  3:41  Mur
\N6 "[Yes,"] said Celia. "[Now you hate me."]
\S  3:41  Mur
\N7 "[No,"] said Murphy. "[Look is there a
clean shirt."]
\L  4:42  Mur
\N1 IN Dublin a week later, that would be September
19th, Neary minus his whiskers was recognised
by a former pupil called Wylie, in the General
Post Off+ice contemplating from behind the
statue of Cuchulain. Neary had bared his
head, as though the holy ground meant something
to him. Suddenly he f+lung aside his hat,
sprang forward, seized the dying hero by the
thighs and began to dash his head against his
buttocks, such as they are. The Civic Guard
on duty in the building, roused from a tender
reverie by the sound of blows, took in the situation
at his leisure, disentangled his baton and
advanced with measured tread, thinking he had
caught a vandal in the act. Happily Wylie,
whose reactions as a street bookmaker's stand
were as rapid as a zebra's, had already seized
Neary round the waist, torn him back from
the sacrif+ice and smuggled him half-way to the
exit.
\S  4:42  Mur
\N21 "[Howlt on there, youze,"] said the C\.G\.
\P  4:43  Mur
\S  4:43  Mur
\N1 Wylie turned back, tapped his forehead and
said, as one sane man to another:
\S  4:43  Mur
\N3 "[John o' God's. Hundred per cent harmless."]
\S  4:43  Mur
\N4 "[Come back in here owwathat,"] said the C\.G\.
\S  4:43  Mur
\N5 Wylie, a tiny man, stood at a loss. Neary,
almost as large as the C\.G\. though not of course
so nobly proportioned, rocked blissfully on the
right arm of his rescuer. It was not in the
C\.G\.'s nature to bandy words, nor had it come
into any branch of his training. He resumed
his steady advance.
\S  4:43  Mur
\N12 "[Stillorgan,"] said Wylie. "[Not Dundrum."]
\S  4:43  Mur
\N13 The C\.G\. laid his monstrous hand on Wylie's
left arm and exerted a strong pull along the line
he had mapped out in his mind. They all
moved off in the desired direction, Neary shod
with orange-peel.
\S  4:43  Mur
\N18 "[John o' God's,"] said Wylie. "[As quiet as
a child."]
\S  4:43  Mur
\N20 They drew up behind the statue. A crowd
gathered behind them. The C\.G\. leaned forward
and scrutinised the pillar and draperies.
\S  4:43  Mur
\N23 "[Not a feather out of her,"] said Wylie.
"[No blood, no brains, nothing."]
\S  4:43  Mur
\N25 The C\.G\. straightened up and let go Wylie's
arm.
\S  4:43  Mur
\N27 "[Move on,"] he said to the crowd, "[before
yer moved on."]
\P  4:44  Mur
\S  4:44  Mur
\N1 The crowd obeyed, with the single diastole-systole
which is all the law requires. Feeling
amply repaid by this superb symbol for the
trouble and risk he had taken in issuing an
order, the C\.G\. inf+lected his attention to Wylie
and said more kindly:
\S  4:44  Mur
\N7 "[Take my advice, mister-+--+-"] He stopped.
To devise words of advice was going to tax his
ability to the utmost. When would he learn
not to plunge into the labyrinths of an opinion
when he had not the slightest idea of how he
was to emerge? And before a hostile audience!
His embarrassment was if possible increased by
the expression of strained attention on Wylie's
face, clamped there by the promise of advice.
\S  4:44  Mur
\N16 "[Yes, sergeant,"] said Wylie, and held his
breath.
\S  4:44  Mur
\N18 "[Run him back to Stillorgan,"] said the C\.G\.
Done it!
\S  4:44  Mur
\N20 Wylie's face came asunder in gratif+ication.
\S  4:44  Mur
\N21 "[Never fear, sergeant,"] he said, urging Neary
towards the exit, "[back to the cell, blood heat,
next best thing to never being born, no heroes,
no f+isc, no-+--+-"]
\S  4:44  Mur
\N25 Neary had been steadily recovering all this
time and now gave such a jerk to Wylie's arm
that that poor little man was nearly pulled off
his feet.
\P  4:45  Mur
\S  4:45  Mur
\N1 "[Where am I?"] said Neary. "[If and when."]
\S  4:45  Mur
\N2 Wylie rushed him into the street and into
a Dalkey tram that had just come in. The crowd
dispersed, the better to gather elsewhere. The
C\.G\. dismissed the whole sordid episode from
his mind, the better to brood on a theme very
near to his heart.
\S  4:45  Mur
\N8 "[Is it the saloon,"] said Neary, "[or the jugs
and bottles?"]
\S  4:45  Mur
\N10 Wylie wet his handkerchief and applied it
tenderly to the breaches of surface, a ministration
immediately poleaxed by Neary, who now
saw his saviour for the f+irst time. Punctured
by those sharp little features of the fury that
had sustained him, he collapsed in a tempest
of sobbing on that sharp little shoulder.
\S  4:45  Mur
\N17 "[Come, come,"] said Wylie, patting the large
heaving back. "[Needle is at hand."]
\S  4:45  Mur
\N19 Neary checked his sobs, raised a face purged
of all passion, seized Wylie by the shoulders,
held him out at arm's length and exclaimed:
\S  4:45  Mur
\N22 "[Is it little Needle Wylie, my scholar that
was. What will you have?"]
\S  4:45  Mur
\N24 "[How do you feel?"] said Wylie.
\S  4:45  Mur
\N25 It dawned on Neary that he was not where
he thought. He rose.
\S  4:45  Mur
\N27 "[What is the f+inest tram in Europe,"] he said,
"[to a man consumed with sobriety?"] He made
\P  4:46  Mur
\N1 the street under his own power with Wylie
close behind him.
\S  4:46  Mur
\N3 "[But by Mooney's clock,"] said Wylie, "[the
sad news is two-thirty-three."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N5 Neary leaned against the Pillar railings and
cursed, f+irst the day in which he was born,
then-+-in a bold f+lash-back-+-the night in which
he was conceived.
\S  4:46  Mur
\N9 "[There, there,"] said Wylie. "[Needle knows
no holy hour."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N11 He led the way to an underground cafe+' close
by, steered Neary into an alcove and called
for Cathleen. Cathleen came.
\S  4:46  Mur
\N14 "[My friend Professor Neary,"] said Wylie,
"[my friend Miss Cathleen na Hennessey."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N16 "[Pleased,"] said Cathleen.
\S  4:46  Mur
\N17 "[Why the\T\-\-,"] said Neary, "[is light given
to a man whose way is hid."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N19 "[Pardon,"] said Cathleen.
\S  4:46  Mur
\N20 "[Two large coffees,"] said Wylie. "[Three star."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N21 One gulp of this and Neary's way was clearer.
\S  4:46  Mur
\N22 "[Now tell us all about it,"] said Wylie.
"[Keep back nothing."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N24 "[The limit of Cork endurance had been
reached,"] said Neary. "[That Red Branch
bum was the camel's back."]
\S  4:46  Mur
\N27 "[Drink a little more of your coffee,"] said
Wylie.
\P  4:47  Mur
\S  4:47  Mur
\N1 Neary drank a little more.
\S  4:47  Mur
\N2 "[What are you doing in this kip at all?"]
said Wylie. "[Why aren't you in Cork?"]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N4 "[My grove on Grand Parade,"] said Neary,
"[is wiped as a man wipeth a plate, wiping it
and turning it upside down."]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N7 "[And your whiskers?"] said Wylie.
\S  4:47  Mur
\N8 "[Suppressed without pity,"] said Neary, "[in
discharge of a vow, never again to ventilate a
virility denied discharge into its predestined
channel."]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N12 "[These are dark sayings,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:47  Mur
\N13 Neary turned his cup upside down.
\S  4:47  Mur
\N14 "[Needle,"] he said, "[as it is with the love
of the body, so with the friendship of the mind,
the full is only reached by admittance to the
most retired places. Here are the pudenda of
my psyche."]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N19 "[Cathleen,"] cried Wylie.
\S  4:47  Mur
\N20 "[But betray me,"] said Neary,"[and you go
the way of Hippasos."]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N22 "[The Akousmatic, I presume,"] said Wylie.
"[His retribution slips my mind."]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N24 "[Drowned in a puddle,"] said Neary, "[for
having divulged the incommensurability of side
and diagonal."]
\S  4:47  Mur
\N27 "[So perish all babblers,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:47  Mur
\N28 "[And the construction of the regular dodeca|
\P  4:48  Mur
\N1 -+-hic-+-dodecahedron,"] said Neary. "[Excuse
me."]
\S  4:48  Mur
\N3 Neary's account, expurgated, accelerated, improved
and reduced, of how he came to reach
the end of Cork endurance, gives the following.
\S  4:48  Mur
\N6 No sooner had Miss Dwyer, despairing of
recommending herself to Flight-Lieutenant Elliman,
made Neary as happy as a man could
desire, than she became one with the ground
against which she had f+igured so prettily. Neary
wrote to Herr Kurt Koffka demanding an immediate
explanation. He had not yet received
an answer.
\S  4:48  Mur
\N14 The problem then became how to break with
the morsel of chaos without hurting its feelings.
The \iplaisir\r \ide\r \irompre\r, for Murphy the rationale
of social contacts, was alien to Neary. He
insisted, by word and deed, that he was not
worthy of her, a hackneyed device that had
the desired effect. And it was not long before
Miss Dwyer had made Flight-Lieutenant Elliman,
despairing of recommending himself to Miss
Farren of Ringsakiddy, as happy as a Flight-Lieutenant
could desire.
\S  4:48  Mur
\N25 Then Neary met Miss Counihan, in the month
of March, ever since when his relation toward
her had been that post-mortem of Dives to
Lazarus, except that there was no Father Abraham
\P  4:49  Mur
\N1 to put in a good word for him. Miss
Counihan was sorry, her breast was preoccupied.
She was touched and f+lattered, but her affections
were in bond. The happy man, since Neary
would press his breast to the thorn, was Mr\.
Murphy, one of his former scholars.
\S  4:49  Mur
\N7 "[Holy God!"] said Wylie.
\S  4:49  Mur
\N8 "[That long hank of Apollonian asthenia,"]
groaned Neary, "[that schizoidal spasmophile,
occupying the breast of angel Counihan. Can
such things be!"]
\S  4:49  Mur
\N12 "[A notable wet indeed,"] said Wylie. "[He
addressed me once."]
\S  4:49  Mur
\N14 "[The last time I saw him,"] said Neary, "[he
was saving up for a Drinker artif+icial respiration
machine to get into when he was fed up breathing."]
\S  4:49  Mur
\N17 "[He expressed the hope, I remember,"] said
Wylie, "[that I might get safely back to my
bottle of hay before someone found me."]
\S  4:49  Mur
\N20 Neary's heart (when not suspended) not only
panted after Miss Counihan, but bled for her
into the bargain, for he was convinced that she
had been abandoned. He recalled how Murphy
had boasted of conducting his amours on the
lines laid down by Fletcher's Sullen Shepherd.
And the terms he had used in speaking of Miss
Counihan did not suggest that he had earmarked
her for special treatment.
\P  4:50  Mur
\S  4:50  Mur
\N1 Murphy had left the Gymnasium the previous
February, about a month before Neary met Miss
Counihan. Since then the only news of him
was that he had been seen in London on Maundy
Thursday late afternoon, supine on the grass in
the Cockpit in Hyde Park, alone and plunged in
a torpor from which all efforts to rouse him had
proved unsuccessful.
\S  4:50  Mur
\N9 Neary besieged Miss Counihan with attentions,
sending her mangoes, orchids, Cuban cigarettes
and a passionately autographed copy of his
tractate, \iThe\r \iDoctrine\r \iof\r \ithe\r \iLimit\r. If she did not
acknowledge these gifts, at least she did not
return them, so that Neary continued to hope.
Finally she gave him a forenoon appointment at
the grave of Father Prout (F\. S\. Mahony) in
Shandon Churchyard, the one place in Cork she
knew of where fresh air, privacy and immunity
from assault were reconciled.
\S  4:50  Mur
\N20 Neary arrived with a superb bunch of cattleyas,
which on her arrival two hours later she took
graciously from him and laid on the slab. She
then made a statement designed to purge the
unhappy man of such remaining designs on her
person as he might happen to cherish.
\S  4:50  Mur
\N26 She was set aside for Murphy, who had torn
himself away to set up for his princess, in some
less desolate quarter of the globe, a habitation
\P  4:51  Mur
\N1 meet for her. When he had done this he would
come f+lying back to claim her. She had not
heard from him since his departure, and therefore
did not know where he was, or what exactly
he was doing. This did not disquiet her, as he
had explained before he left that to make good
and love, were it only by letter, at one and the
same time, was more than he could manage.
Consequently he would not write until he had
some tangible success to report. She would not
inf+lict needless pain on Neary by enlarging on
the nature of her feeling for Mr\. Murphy, enough
had been said to make it clear that she could not
tolerate his propositions. If he were not gentleman
enough to desist on his own bottom, she
would have him legally restrained.
\S  4:51  Mur
\N17 At this point Neary paused and buried his
face in his hands.
\S  4:51  Mur
\N19 "[My poor friend,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:51  Mur
\N20 Neary reached forward with his hands across
the marble top to Wylie, who seized them in an
ecstasy of compassion and began to massage them.
Neary closed his eyes. In vain. The human eyelid
is not teartight (happily for the human eye).
In the presence of such grief Wylie felt purer
than at any time since his second communion.
\S  4:51  Mur
\N27 "[Do not tell me any more,"] he said, "[if it
gives you so much pain."]
\P  4:52  Mur
\S  4:52  Mur
\N1 "[Two in distress,"] said Neary, "[make sorrow
less."]
\S  4:52  Mur
\N3 To free the hand from sympathetic pressure is
an operation requiring such an exquisite touch
that Neary decided he had better not attempt it.
The ruse he adopted so that Wylie might not be
wounded was to beg for a cigarette. He went
further, he suffered his cup to be replenished.
\S  4:52  Mur
\N9 Miss Counihan, her statement concluded,
turned to go. Neary sank on one knee, on both
knees, and begged her to hear him in a voice so
hoarse with anguish that she turned back.
\S  4:52  Mur
\N13 "[Mr\. Neary,"] she said, almost gently, "[I am
sorry if I have seemed to speak unfeelingly.
Believe me, I have nothing against you personally.
If I were not-+-er-+-disposed of, I might
even learn to like you, Mr\. Neary. But you
must understand that I am not free to-+-er-+-do
justice to your addresses. Try and forget me,
Mr\. Neary."]
\S  4:52  Mur
\N21 Wylie rubbed his hands.
\S  4:52  Mur
\N22 "[Things are looking up,"] he said.
\S  4:52  Mur
\N23 Again she turned to go, again Neary stayed
her, this time with the assurance that what he
had to say concerned not himself but Murphy.
He described the position in which that knight-errant
had last been heard of.
\S  4:52  Mur
\N28 "[London!"] exclaimed Miss Counihan. "[The
\P  4:53  Mur
\N1 Mecca of every young aspirant to f+iscal distinction."]
\S  4:53  Mur
\N3 This was a balloon that Neary quickly punctured,
with a sketch of the phases through which
the young aspirant in London had to pass before
he could call himself an old suspirant. He then
made what he would always regard as the greatest
blunder of his career. He began to disparage
Murphy.
\S  4:53  Mur
\N10 That afternoon he shaved off his whiskers.
\S  4:53  Mur
\N11 He did not see her again for nearly four months,
when she knocked into him skilfully in the Mall.
She looked ill (she was ill). It was August and
still she had no news of Murphy. Was there no
means of getting in touch with him. Neary, who
had already gone deeply into this question,
replied that he could not think of any. He
seemed to have only one person belonging to
him, a demented uncle who spent his time
between Amsterdam and Scheveningen. Miss
Counihan went on to say that she could not very
well renounce a young man, such a nice young
man, who for all she knew to the contrary was
steadily amassing a large fortune so that she
might not be without any of the little luxuries
to which she was accustomed, and whom of
course she loved very dearly, unless she had
superlative reasons for doing, such for example
\P  4:54  Mur
\N1 as would f+low from a legally attested certif+icate
of his demise, a repudiation of her person under
his own hand and seal, or overwhelming evidence
of inf+idelity and economic failure. She welcomed
the happy chance that allowed her to communicate
this-+-er-+-modif+ied view of the situation
to Mr\. Neary, looking so much more-+-er-+-|
youthful without his whiskers, on the very eve of
her departure to Dublin, where Wynn's Hotel
would always f+ind her.
\S  4:54  Mur
\N11 The next morning Neary closed the Gymnasium,
put a padlock on the Grove, sunk both
keys in the Lee and boarded the f+irst train for
Dublin, accompanied by his \ia+^me\r \idamne+'e\r and man-of-all-work,
Cooper.
\S  4:54  Mur
\N16 Cooper's only visible humane characteristic
was a morbid craving for alcoholic depressant.
So long as he could be kept off the bottle he was
an invaluable servant. He was a low-sized,
clean-shaven, grey-faced, one-eyed man, triorchous
and a non-smoker. He had a curious
hunted walk, like that of a destitute diabetic in a
strange city. He never sat down and never
took off his hat.
\S  4:54  Mur
\N25 This ruthless tout was now launched in pursuit
of Murphy, with the torpor in the Cockpit as the
only clue. But many a poor wretch had been
nailed by Cooper with very much less to work
\P  4:55  Mur
\N1 on. While Cooper was combing London, where
he would stay at the usual stew, Neary would be
working a line of his own in Dublin, where
Wynn's Hotel would always f+ind him. When
Cooper found Murphy, all he had to do was to
notify Neary by wire.
\S  4:55  Mur
\N7 A feature of Miss Counihan's attitude to Neary
had been the regularity of its alternation.
Having shown herself cruel, kind, cruel and kind
in turn, she could no more welcome his arrival
at her hotel than green, yellow, green is a legitimate
sequence of traff+ic lights.
\S  4:55  Mur
\N13 Either he left the hotel or she did. He did,
so that at least he might know whose were the
happy beds and breakfasts. If he attempted to
speak to her again before he had equipped himself
with the-+-er-+-discharge papers aforesaid, she
would send for the police.
\S  4:55  Mur
\N19 Neary crawled to the nearest station doss. All
depended now on Cooper. If Cooper failed him
he would simply post himself early one morning
outside her hotel and as soon as she came tripping
down the steps take salts of lemon.
\S  4:55  Mur
\N24 In the meantime there was little he could do.
He began feebly to look for a thread that might
lead him to Murphy among the nobility, tradesmen
and gentry of that name in Dublin, but
soon left off, appalled. He instructed the hall
\P  4:56  Mur
\N1 porter in Wynn's to send any telegrams addressed
to him from London across the street to Mooney's,
where he would always be found. There he sat
all day, moving slowly from one stool to another
until he had completed the circuit of the counters,
when he would start all over again in the reverse
direction. He did not speak to the curates, he
did not drink the endless half-pints of porter that
he had to buy, he did nothing but move slowly
round the ring of counters, f+irst in one direction,
then in the other, thinking of Miss Counihan.
When the house closed at night he went back to
the doss and dossed, and in the morning he did
not get up until shortly before the house was due
to open. The hour from 2\.30 to 3\.30 he devoted
to having himself shaved to the pluck. The
whole of Sunday he spent in doss, as the hall
porter at Wynn's was aware, thinking of Miss
Counihan. the power to stop his heart had
deserted him.
\S  4:56  Mur
\N21 "[My poor friend,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:56  Mur
\N22 "[Till this morning,"] said Neary. Feeling his
mouth beginning to twitch he covered it with his
hand. In vain. The face is an organised whole.
"[Or rather this afternoon,"]he said, directly he
was able.
\S  4:56  Mur
\N27 He had reached the turn and was thinking of
ebbing back when the boots from Wynn's came
\P  4:57  Mur
\N1 in and handed him a telegram. FOUND STOP
LOOK SLIPPY STOP COOPER. He was still laughing
and crying, to the great relief of the curates, who
had grown to detest and dread that frozen face
day after day at their counters, when the boots
returned with a second telegram. LOST STOP
STOP WHERE YOU ARE STOP COOPER.
\S  4:57  Mur
\N8 "[I have a confused recollection,"] said Neary,
"[of being thrown out."]
\S  4:57  Mur
\N10 "[The curate mentality,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:57  Mur
\N11 "[Then nothing more,"] said Neary, "[until
that deathless rump was trying to stare me down."]
\S  4:57  Mur
\N13 "[But there is no rump,"]said Wylie. "[How
could there be? What chance would a rump
have in the G\.P\.O\.?"]
\S  4:57  Mur
\N16 "[I tell you I saw it,"] said Neary, "[trying to
downface me."]
\S  4:57  Mur
\N18 Wylie told him what happened next.
\S  4:57  Mur
\N19 "[Do not quibble,"]said Neary harshly. "[You
saved my life. Now palliate it."]
\S  4:57  Mur
\N21 "[I greatly fear,"]said Wylie, "[that the syndrome
known as life is too diffuse to admit of
palliation. For every symptom that is eased,
another is made worse. The horse leech's
daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of
wantum cannot vary."]
\S  4:57  Mur
\N27 "[Very prettily put,"] said Neary.
\S  4:57  Mur
\N28 "[For an example of what I mean,"] said Wylie,
\P  4:58  Mur
\N1 "[you have merely to consider the young Fellow
of Trinity College-+--+-"]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N3 "[Merely is excellent,"] said Neary.
\S  4:58  Mur
\N4 "[He sought relief in insulin,"] said Wylie, "[and
cured himself of diabetes."]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N6 "[Poor old chap,"] said Neary. "[Relief from
what?"]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N8 "[The sweated sinecure,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:58  Mur
\N9 "[I don't wonder at Berkeley,"] said Neary.
"[He had no alternative. A defence mechanism.
Immaterialise or bust. The sleep of sheer terror.
Compare the opossum."]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N13 "[The advantage of this view,"] said Wylie, "[is,
that while one may not look forward to things
getting any better, at least one need not fear
their getting any worse. They will always be
the same as they always were."]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N18 "[Until the system is dismantled,"] said
Neary.
\S  4:58  Mur
\N20 "[Supposing that to be permitted,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:58  Mur
\N21 "[From all of which I am to infer,"] said Neary,
"[correct me if I am wrong, that the possession-+-|
\iDeus\r \idet\r!-+-of angel Counihan will create an
aching void to the same amount."]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N25 "[Humanity is a well with two buckets,"] said
Wylie, "[one going down to be f+illed, the other
coming up to be emptied."]
\S  4:58  Mur
\N28 "[What I make on the swings of Miss Counihan,"]
\P  4:59  Mur
\N1 said Neary, "[if I understand you, I lose
on the roundabouts of the non-Miss Counihan."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N3 "[Very prettily put,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:59  Mur
\N4 "[There is no non-Miss Counihan,"] said Neary.
\S  4:59  Mur
\N5 "[There will be,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:59  Mur
\N6 "[Help there to be,"] cried Neary, clasping his
hands, "[in this Coney Eastern Island that is
Neary, some Chinese attractions other than Miss
Counihan."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N10 "[Now you are talking,"] said Wylie. "[When
you ask for heal-all you are not talking. But
when you ask for a single symptom to be superseded,
then I am bound to admit that you are
talking."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N15 "[There is only the one symptom,"] said Neary.
"[Miss Counihan."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N17 "[Well,"] said Wylie, "[I do not think we should
have much diff+iculty in f+inding a substitute."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N19 "[I declare to my God,"] said Neary, "[sometimes
you talk as great tripe as Murphy."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N21 "[Once a certain degree of insight has been
reached,"] said Wylie, "[all men talk, when talk
they must, the same tripe."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N24 "[Should you happen at any time,"] said Neary,
"[to feel like derogating from the general to the
particular, remember I am here, and on the alert."]
\S  4:59  Mur
\N27 "[My advice to you is this,"] said Wylie.
"[Leave to-night for the Great Wen-+--+-"]
\P  4:60  Mur
\S  4:60  Mur
\N1 "[What folly is this?"] said Neary.
\S  4:60  Mur
\N2 "[Having f+irst written to Miss Counihan how
happy you are to be able to inform her at last
that all the necessary passports and credentials
to her precincts are in hand. Hers to wipe her|
-+-er-+-feet on. No more. No word of having
gone, no note of passion. She will sit as one
might say pretty-+--+-"]
\S  4:60  Mur
\N9 "[One might well,"] said Neary.
\S  4:60  Mur
\N10 "[For a day or two and then, in great distress
of mind, lay herself out to knock into you in the
street. Instead of which I shall knock into her."]
\S  4:60  Mur
\N13 "[What folly is this?"] said Neary. "[You don't
know her."]
\S  4:60  Mur
\N15 "[Not know her is it,"] said Wylie, "[when there
is no single aspect of her natural body with which
I am not familiar."]
\S  4:60  Mur
\N18 "[What do you mean?"] said Neary.
\S  4:60  Mur
\N19 "[I have worshipped her from afar,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:60  Mur
\N20 "[How far?"] said Neary.
\S  4:60  Mur
\N21 "[Yes,"] said Wylie pensively, "[all last June,
through Zeiss glasses, at a watering place."] He
fell into a reverie, which Neary was a big enough
man to respect. "[What a bust!"] he cried at
length, as though galvanised by this point in his
ref+lections. "[All centre and no circumference!"]
\S  4:60  Mur
\N27 "[No doubt,"] said Neary, "[but is it germane?
You knock into her in the street. What then?"]
\P  4:61  Mur
\S  4:61  Mur
\N1 "[After the prescribed exchanges,"] said Wylie,
"[she asks casually have I seen you. From that
moment she is lost."]
\S  4:61  Mur
\N4 "[But if it is merely a matter of getting me out
of the way,"] said Neary, "[while you work up
Miss Counihan, why need I go to London? Why
not Bray?"]
\S  4:61  Mur
\N8 The thought of going to London was distasteful
to Neary for a number of reasons, of which by
no means the least cogent was the presence there
of his second deserted wife. Strictly speaking
this woman, a ne+'e Cox, was not his wife, and
he owed her no duty, since his f+irst deserted wife
was alive and well in Calcutta. But the lady in
London did not take this view and neither did
her legal advisers. Wylie knew something of this
position.
\S  4:61  Mur
\N18 "[To control Cooper,"] said Wylie, "[who has
probably gone on the booze or been got at or
both."]
\S  4:61  Mur
\N21 "[But would it not be possible,"] said Neary,
"[with your priceless collaboration, to work it
from this end altogether and drop Murphy?"]
\S  4:61  Mur
\N24 "[I greatly fear,"] said Wylie, "[that so long as
Murphy is even a remote possibility Miss Counihan
will not parley. All I can do is establish
you f+irmly in the position of f+irst come-down."]
\S  4:61  Mur
\N28 Neary again buried his head in his hands.
\P  4:62  Mur
\S  4:62  Mur
\N1 "[Cathleen,"] said Wylie, "[tell the Professor
the worst."]
\S  4:62  Mur
\N3 "[Eight sixes forty-eight,"] said Cathleen, "[and
twos sixteen one pound."]
\S  4:62  Mur
\N5 In the street Neary said:
\S  4:62  Mur
\N6 "[Wylie, why are you so kind?"]
\S  4:62  Mur
\N7 "[I don't seem able to control myself,"] said
Wylie, "[in the presence of certain predicaments."]
\S  4:62  Mur
\N9 "[You shall f+ind me I think not ungrateful,"]
said Neary.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N11 They went a little way in silence. Then Neary
said:
\S  4:62  Mur
\N13 "[I cannot think what women see in Murphy."]
\S  4:62  Mur
\N14 But Wylie was absorbed in the problem of what
it was, in the predicaments of men like Neary,
that carried him so far out of his government.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N17 "[Can you?"] said Neary.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N18 Wylie considered for a moment. Then he said:
\S  4:62  Mur
\N19 "[It is his-+--+-"] stopping for want of the right
word. There seemed to be, for once, a right
word.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N22 "[His what?"] said Neary.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N23 They went a little further in silence. Neary
gave up listening for an answer and raised his
face to the sky. The gentle rain was trying not
to fall.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N27 "[His surgical quality,"] said Wylie.
\S  4:62  Mur
\N28 It was not quite the right word.
\L  5:63  Mur
\N1 THE room that Celia had found was in Brewery
Road between Pentonville Prison and the Metropolitan
Cattle Market. West Brompton knew
them no more. The room was large and the
few articles of furniture it contained were large.
The bed, the gas cooker, the table and the
solitary tallboy, all were very large indeed. Two
massive upright unupholstered armchairs, similar
to those killed under him by Balzac, made it just
possible for them to take their meals seated.
Murphy's rocking-chair trembled by the hearth,
facing the window. The vast f+loor area was
covered all over by a linoleum of exquisite design,
a dim geometry of blue, grey and brown that
delighted Murphy because it called Braque to his
mind, and Celia because it delighted Murphy.
Murphy was one of the elect, who require everything
to remind them of something else. The
walls were distempered a vivid lemon, Murphy's
lucky colour. This was so far in excess of the
squeeze prescribed by Suk that he could not feel
\P  5:64  Mur
\N1 quite easy in his mind about it. The ceiling was
lost in the shadows, yes, really lost in the shadows.
\S  5:64  Mur
\N3 Here they entered upon what Celia called the
new life. Murphy was inclined to think that the
new life, if it came at all, came later, and then to
one of them only. But Celia was so set on computing
it from the hegira to the heights of
Islington that he left it so. He did not want to
gainsay her any more.
\S  5:64  Mur
\N10 An immediate f+law in the new life was the
landlady, a small thin worrier called Miss Carridge,
a woman of such astute rectitude that she
not only refused to cook the bill for Mr\. Quigley,
but threatened to inform that poor gentleman of
how she had been tempted.
\S  5:64  Mur
\N16 "[A lady,"] said Murphy bitterly, "[not a landlady.
Thin lips and a Doric pelvis. We are
P\.G\.s."]
\S  5:64  Mur
\N19 "[All the more reason to f+ind work,"] said
Celia.
\S  5:64  Mur
\N21 Everything that happened became with Celia
yet another reason for Murphy's f+inding
work. She exhibited a morbid ingenuity in
this matter. From such antagonistic occasions
as a new arrival at Pentonville and a fence
sold out in the Market she drew the same
text. The antinomies of unmarried love can
seldom have appeared to better advantage.
\P  5:65  Mur
\N1 They persuaded Murphy that his engagement at
even a small salary could not fail to annihilate,
for a time at least, the visible universe for his
beloved. She would have to learn what it stood
for all over again. And was she not rather too
old for such a feat of readaptation?
\S  5:65  Mur
\N7 He kept these forebodings to himself, and indeed
tried to suppress them, so genuine was his anxiety
that for him henceforward there should be no
willing and no nilling but with her, or at least as
little as possible. Also he knew her retort in
advance: "[Then there will be nothing to
distract me from you."] This was the kind of
Joe Miller that Murphy simply could not bear
to hear revived. It had never been a good joke.
\S  5:65  Mur
\N16 Not the least remarkable of Murphy's innumerable
classif+ications of experience was that into
jokes that had once been good jokes and jokes
that had never been good jokes. What but an
imperfect sense of humour could have made such
a mess of chaos. In the beginning was the pun.
And so on.
\S  5:65  Mur
\N23 Celia was conscious of two equally important
reasons for insisting as she did. The f+irst was her
desire to make a man of Murphy! Yes, June
to October, counting in the blockade she had
almost f+ive months' experience of Murphy, yet
the image of him as a man of the world continued
\P  5:66  Mur
\N1 to beckon her on. The second was her aversion
to resuming her own work, as would certainly be
necessary if Murphy did not f+ind a job before her
savings, scraped together during the blockade,
were exhausted. What she shrank from was not
merely an occupation that she had always found
dull (Mr\. Kelly was mistaken in thinking her
made for the life) but also the effect its resumption
must have on her relations with Murphy.
\S  5:66  Mur
\N10 Both these lines led to Murphy (everything led
to Murphy), but so diversely, the one from a
larval experience to a person of fantasy, the other
from a complete experience to a person of fact,
that only a woman and one so .+.+. intact as
Celia could have given them equal value.
\S  5:66  Mur
\N16 Most of the time that he was out she spent
sitting in the rocking-chair with her face to the
light. There was not much light, the room
devoured it, but she kept her face turned to what
there was. The small single window condensed
its changes, as half-closed eyes see the f+iner values
of tones, so that it was never quiet in the room,
but brightening and darkening in a slow ample
f+licker that went on all day, brightening against
the darkening that was its end. A peristalsis of
light, worming its way into the dark.
\S  5:66  Mur
\N27 She preferred sitting in the chair, steeping
herself in these faint eddies till they made an
\P  5:67  Mur
\N1 amnion about her own disquiet, to walking the
streets (she could not disguise her gait) or wandering
in the Market, where the frenzied justif+ication
of life as an end to means threw light on Murphy's
prediction, that livelihood would destroy one or
two or all three of his life's goods. This view,
which she had always felt absurd and wished to
go on feeling so, lost something of its absurdity
when she collated Murphy and the Caledonian
Market.
\S  5:67  Mur
\N11 Thus in spite of herself she began to understand
as soon as he gave up trying to explain. She
could not go where livings were being made
without feeling that they were being made away.
She could not sit for long in the chair without the
impulse stirring, tremulously, as for an exquisite
depravity, to be naked and bound. She tried to
think of Mr\. Kelly or the irrevocable days or the
unattainable days, but always the moment came
when no effort of thought could prevail against
the sensation of being imbedded in a jelly of light,
or calm the trembling of her body to be made
fast.
\S  5:67  Mur
\N24 Miss Carridge's day had a nucleus, the nice
strong cup of tea that she took in the afternoon.
It sometimes happened that she sat down to this
elixir with the conviction of having left undone
none of those things that paid and done none of
\P  5:68  Mur
\N1 those things that did not pay. Then she would
pour out a cup for Celia and tiptoe with it up the
stairs. Miss Carridge's method of entering a
private apartment was to knock timidly on the
door on the outside some time after she had closed
it behind her on the inside. Not even a nice
hot cup of tea in her hand could make her
subject to the usual conditions of time and space
in this matter. It was as though she had an
accomplice.
\S  5:68  Mur
\N11 "[I have brought you-+--+-"] she said.
\S  5:68  Mur
\N12 "[Come in,"] said Celia.
\S  5:68  Mur
\N13 "[A nice hot cup of tea,"] said Miss Carridge.
"[Drink it before it coagulates."]
\S  5:68  Mur
\N15 Now Miss Carridge smelt, with a smell that
not even her nearest and dearest had ever got
used to. She stood there, smelling, ravished in
contemplation of her tea being taken. The
irony of it was, that while Miss Carridge held
her breath quite unnecessarily at sight of
Celia taking the tea, Celia could not hold hers
at the smell of Miss Carridge standing over
her.
\S  5:68  Mur
\N24 "[I hope you like the aroma,"] said Miss
Carridge. "[Choicest Lapsang Souchong."]
\S  5:68  Mur
\N26 She moved away with the empty cup and
Celia snatched a gulp of fragrance from her own
bosom. This proved to be indeed a happy
\P  5:69  Mur
\N1 inspiration, for Miss Carridge paused on the way
to the door.
\S  5:69  Mur
\N3 "[Hark,"] she said, pointing upward.
\S  5:69  Mur
\N4 A soft padding to and fro was audible.
\S  5:69  Mur
\N5 "[The old boy,"] said Miss Carridge. "[Never
still."]
\S  5:69  Mur
\N7 Happily Miss Carridge was a woman of few
words. When body odour and volubility meet,
then there is no remedy.
\S  5:69  Mur
\N10 The old boy was believed to be a retired butler.
He never left his room, except of course when
absolutely obliged to, nor allowed anyone to
enter it. He took in the tray that Miss Carridge
left twice daily at his door, and put it out when
he had eaten. Miss Carridge's "[Never still"]
was an exaggeration, but it was true that he did
spend a great deal of his time ranging his room
in every direction.
\S  5:69  Mur
\N19 It was not often that Miss Carridge so far forgot
herself in the glow of domestic economy as to
give away a cup of Lapsang Souchong. Most
days the long trance in the chair continued
unbroken until it was time to prepare a meal
against Murphy's return.
\S  5:69  Mur
\N25 The punctuality with which Murphy returned
was astonishing. Literally he did not vary in
this by more than a few seconds from day to day.
Celia wondered how anyone so vague about
\P  5:70  Mur
\N1 time in every other way could achieve such
inhuman regularity in this one instance. He
explained it, when she asked him, as the product
of love, which forbade him to stay away from
her a moment longer than was compatible with
duty, and anxiety to cultivate the sense of time
as money which he had heard was highly prized
in business circles.
\S  5:70  Mur
\N9 The truth was that Murphy began to return in
such good time that he arrived in Brewery Road
with hours to spare. From the practical point
of view he could see no difference between
hanging about in Brewery Road and hanging
about say in Lombard Street. His prospects
of employment were the same in both places, in
all places. But from the sentimental point of
view the difference was most marked. Brewery
Road was her forecourt, in certain moods almost
her ruelle.
\S  5:70  Mur
\N20 Murphy on the jobpath was a striking f+igure.
Word went round among the members of the
Blake League that the Master's conception of
Bildad the Shuhite had come to life and was
stalking about London in a green suit, seeking
whom he might comfort.
\S  5:70  Mur
\N26 But what is Bildad but a fragment of Job, as
Zophar and the others are fragments of Job.
The only thing Murphy was seeking was what he
\P  5:71  Mur
\N1 had not ceased to seek from the moment of his
being strangled into a state of respiration-+-the
best of himself. The Blake League was utterly
mistaken in supposing him on the \iqui\r \ivive\r for
someone wretched enough to be consoled by
such maieutic saws as "[How can he be clean
that is born."] Utterly mistaken. Murphy required
for his pity no other butt than himself.
\S  5:71  Mur
\N9 His troubles had begun early. To go back no
further than the vagitus, it had not been the
proper A of international concert pitch, with 435
double vibrations per second, but the double f+lat
of this. How he winced, the honest obstetrician,
a devout member of the old Dublin Orchestral
Society and an amateur f+lautist of some merit.
With what sorrow he recorded that of all the
millions of little larynges cursing in unison at that
particular moment, the infant Murphy's alone
was off the note. To go back no further than
the vagitus.
\S  5:71  Mur
\N21 His rattle will make amends.
\S  5:71  Mur
\N22 His suit was not green, but a+eruginous. This
also cannot be emphasised too strongly against
the Blake League. In some places it was actually
as black as the day it was bought, in others a
strong light was needed to bring out the livid
gloss, the rest was admittedly a+eruginous. One
beheld in fact a relic of those sanguine days
\P  5:72  Mur
\N1 when as a theological student he had used to lie
awake night after night with Bishop Bouvier's
\iSupplementum\r \iad\r \iTractatum\r \ide\r \iMatrimonio\r under
his pillow. What a work that was to be sure!
A Cine+' Bleu scenario in goatish Latin. Or
pondering Christ's parthian shaft: \iIt\r \iis\r \if+inished\r.
\S  5:72  Mur
\N7 No less than the colour the cut was striking.
The jacket, a tube in its own right, descended
clear of the body as far as mid-thigh, where the
skirts were slightly ref+lexed like the mouth of a
bell in a mute appeal to be lifted that some found
hard to resist. The trousers in their heyday had
exhibited the same proud and inf+lexible autonomy
of hang. But now, broken by miles of bitter
stair till they were obliged to cling here and there
for support to the legs within, a corkscrew effect
betrayed their fatigue.
\S  5:72  Mur
\N18 Murphy never wore a waistcoat. It made
him feel like a woman.
\S  5:72  Mur
\N20 With regard to the material of this suit, the
bold claim was advanced by the makers that it
was holeproof. This was true in the sense that
it was entirely non-porous. It admitted no air
from the outer world, it allowed none of Murphy's
own vapours to escape. To the touch it felt like
felt rather than cloth, much size must have
entered into its composition.
\S  5:72  Mur
\N28 These remains of a decent outf+it Murphy lit
\P  5:73  Mur
\N1 up with a perfectly plain lemon made-up bow
tie presented as though in derision by a collar and
dicky combination carved from a single sheet of
celluloid and without seam, of a period with the
suit and the last of its kind.
\S  5:73  Mur
\N6 Murphy never wore a hat, the memories it
awoke of the caul were too poignant, especially
when he had to take it off.
\S  5:73  Mur
\N9 Regress in these togs was slow and Murphy was
well advised to abandon hope for the day shortly
after lunch and set off on the long climb home.
By far the best part of the way was the toil from
King's Cross up Caledonian Road, reminding
him of the toil from St\. Lazare up Rue d'Amsterdam.
And while Brewery Road was by no means
a Boulevard de Clichy nor even des Batignolles,
still it was better at the end of the hill than
either of those, as asylum (after a point) is better
than exile.
\S  5:73  Mur
\N20 At the top there was the little shelter like a
head on the pimple of Market Road Gardens
opposite the Tripe Factory. Here Murphy loved
to sit ensconced between the perfume of disinfectants
from Milton House immediately to the
south and the stench of stalled cattle from the
corral immediately to the west. The tripe did
not smell.
\S  5:73  Mur
\N28 But now it was winter-time again, night's young
\P  5:74  Mur
\N1 thoughts had been put back an hour, the \imultis\r
\ilatebra\r \iopportuna\r of Market Road Gardens were
closed before Murphy was due back with Celia.
Then he would put in the time walking round
and round Pentonville Prison. Even so at evening
he had walked round and round cathedrals
that it was too late to enter.
\S  5:74  Mur
\N8 He took up his stand in good time in the mouth
of Brewery Road, so that when the clock in the
prison tower marked six-forty-f+ive he could get
off the mark without delay. Then slowly past
the last bourns, the Perseverance and Temperance Yards,
the Vis Vita+e Bread Co\., the Marx
Cork Bath Mat Manufactory, till he stood with
his key in the door waiting for the clock in the
market tower to chime.
\S  5:74  Mur
\N17 The f+irst thing Celia must do was help him
out of the suit and smile when he said "[Imagine
Miss Carridge in a gown of this"]; then make
what she could of his face as he crouched over
the f+ire trying to get warm, and refrain from
questions; then feed him. Then, till it was
time to push him out in the morning, serenade,
nocturne and albada. Yes, June to October,
leaving out the blockade, their nights were still
that: serenade, nocturne and albada.
\S  5:74  Mur
\N28 Suk's theme of Murphy's heaven went everywhere
\P  5:75  Mur
\N1 with that poorly starred native. He had
committed it to memory, he chanted it privately
as he went along. Many times he had taken it
out to destroy it, lest he fell into the hands of
the enemy. But his memory was so treacherous
that he did not dare. He observed its
precepts to the best of his ability. The dash
of lemon was not absent from his apparel. He
remained constantly on his guard against the
various threats to his Hyleg and whole person
generally. He suffered much with his feet, and
his neck was not altogether free of pain. This
f+illed him with satisfaction. It conf+irmed the
diagram and reduced by just so much the danger
of Bright's disease, Grave's disease, strangury and
f+its.
\S  5:75  Mur
\N17 But there remained certain provisions that he
could not implement. He had not the right gem
to ensure success, indeed he had no gem of any
kind. He trembled at the thought of how this
want lengthened the odds against him. The
lucky number did not coincide with a Sunday for
a full year to come, not until Sunday, October
4th, 1936, could the maximum chance of success
attend any new venture of Murphy's. This also
was a perpetual worry, as he felt sure that long
before then his own little prophecy, based on the
one system outside that of the heavenly bodies
\P  5:76  Mur
\N1 in which he had the least conf+idence, his own,
would have been fulf+illed.
\S  5:76  Mur
\N3 In the matter of a career Murphy could not
help feeling that his stars had been guilty of some
redundance, and that once go-between had been
ordained further specif+ication was superf+luous.
For what was all working for a living but a
procuring and a pimping for the money-bags,
one's lecherous tyrants the money-bags, so that
they might breed.
\S  5:76  Mur
\N11 There seems to be a certain disharmony
between the only two canons in which Murphy
can feel the least conf+idence. So much the worse
for him, no doubt.
\S  5:76  Mur
\N15 Celia said that if he did not f+ind work at once
she would have to go back to hers. Murphy
knew what that meant. No more music.
\S  5:76  Mur
\N18 This phrase is chosen with care, lest the f+ilthy
censors should lack an occasion to commit their
f+ilthy synecdoche.
\S  5:76  Mur
\N21 Goaded by the thought of losing Celia even
were it only by night (for she had promised not
to "[leave"] him any more), Murphy applied at
a chandlery in Gray's Inn Road for the position
of smart boy, f+ingering his lemon bow nervously.
This was the f+irst time he had actually presented
himself as candidate for a def+inite post. Up till
then he had been content to expose himself
\P  5:77  Mur
\N1 vaguely in aloof able-bodied postures on the
fringes of the better-attended slave-markets, or
to drag from pillar to post among the agencies,
a dog's life without a dog's prerogative.
\S  5:77  Mur
\N5 The chandlers all came galloping out to see
the smart boy.
\S  5:77  Mur
\N7 "['E ain't smart,"] said the chandler, "[not by a
long chork 'e ain't."]
\S  5:77  Mur
\N9 "[Nor 'e ain't a boy,"] said the chandler's semiprivate
convenience, "[not to my mind 'e ain't."]
\S  5:77  Mur
\N11 "['E don't look rightly human to me,"] said the
chandlers' eldest waste product, "[not rightly."]
\S  5:77  Mur
\N13 Murphy was too familiar with this attitude of
derision tinged with loathing to make the further
blunder of trying to abate it. Sometimes it was
expressed more urbanely, sometimes less. Its forms
were as various as the grades of the chandler
mentality, its content was one: "[Thou surd!"]
\S  5:77  Mur
\N19 He looked for somewhere to sit down. There
was nowhere. There had once been a small
public garden south of the Royal Free Hospital,
but now part of it lay buried under one of those
malignant proliferations of urban tissue known
as service f+lats and the rest was reserved for the
bacteria.
\S  5:77  Mur
\N26 At this moment Murphy would willingly have
waived his expectation of Antepurgatory for f+ive
minutes in his chair, renounced the lee of
\P  5:78  Mur
\N1 Belacqua's rock and his embryonal repose, looking
down at dawn across the reeds to the trembling
of the austral sea and the sun obliquing to
the north as it rose, immune from expiation until
he should have dreamed it all through again,
with the downright dreaming of an infant, from
the spermarium to the crematorium. He thought
so highly of this post-mortem situation, its advantages
were present in such detail to his mind, that
he actually hoped he might live to be old. Then
he would have a long time lying there dreaming,
watching the dayspring run through its zodiac,
before the toil up hill to Paradise. The gradient
was outrageous, one in less than one. God grant
no godly chandler would shorten his time with a
good prayer.
\S  5:78  Mur
\N17 This was his Belacqua fantasy and perhaps the
most highly systematised of the whole collection.
It belonged to those that lay just beyond the
frontiers of suffering, it was the f+irst landscape of
freedom.
\S  5:78  Mur
\N22 He leaned weakly against the railings of the
Royal Free Hospital, multiplying his vows to
erase this vision of Zion's antipodes for ever from
his repertory if only he were immediately wafted
to his rocking-chair and allowed to rock for f+ive
minutes. To sit down was no longer enough, he
must insist now on lying down. Any old clod
\P  5:79  Mur
\N1 of the well-known English turf would do, on
which he might lie down, cease to take notice
and enter the landscapes where there were no
chandlers and no exclusive residential cancers,
but only himself improved out of all knowledge.
\S  5:79  Mur
\N6 The nearest place he could think of was Lincoln's
Inn Fields. The atmosphere there was
foul, a miasma of laws. Those of the cozeners,
crossbiting and conycatching and sacking and
f+igging; and those of the cozened, pillory and
gallows. But there was grass and there were
plane trees.
\S  5:79  Mur
\N13 After a few steps in the direction of this lap
that was better than none, Murphy leaned again
against the railings. It was clear that he had
as much chance of walking to Lincoln's Inn
Fields in his present condition as he had of walking
to the Cockpit, and very much less incentive.
He must sit down before he could lie down.
Walk before you run, sit down before you lie
down. He thought for a second of splashing the
fourpence he allowed himself to be allowed for
his lunch on a conveyance back to Brewery Road.
But then Celia would think he was quitting on the
strength of her promise not to leave him, even
though she had to return to her work. The only
solution was to take his lunch at once, more than
an hour before he was due to salivate.
\P  5:80  Mur
\S  5:80  Mur
\N1 Murphy's fourpenny lunch was a ritual vitiated
by no base thoughts of nutrition. He advanced
along the railings by easy stages until he came to
a branch of the caterers he wanted. The sensation
of the seat of a chair coming together with
his drooping posteriors at last was so delicious
that he rose at once and repeated the sit, lingeringly
and with intense concentration. Murphy
did not so often meet with these tendernesses
that he could afford to treat them casually. The
second sit, however, was a great disappointment.
\S  5:80  Mur
\N12 The waitress stood before, with an air of such
abstraction that he did not feel entitled to regard
himself as an element in her situation. At last,
seeing that she did not move, he said:
\S  5:80  Mur
\N16 "[Bring me,"] in the voice of an usher resolved
to order the chef's special selection for a school
outing. He paused after this preparatory signal
to let the fore-period develop, that f+irst of the
three moments of reaction in which, according
to the Ku+:lpe school, the major torments of
response are undergone. Then he applied the
stimulus proper.
\S  5:80  Mur
\N24 "[A cup of tea and a packet of assorted biscuits."]
Twopence the tea, twopence the biscuits, a perfectly
balanced meal.
\S  5:80  Mur
\N27 As though suddenly aware of the great magical
ability, or it might have been the surgical quality,
\P  5:81  Mur
\N1 the waitress murmured, before the eddies of the
main-period drifted her away:"[Vera to you,
dear."] This was not a caress.
\S  5:81  Mur
\N4 Murphy had some faith in the Ku+:lpe school.
Marbe and Bu+:hler might be deceived, even Watt
was only human, but how could Ach be wrong?
\S  5:81  Mur
\N7 Vera concluded, as she thought, her performance
in much better style than she had begun.
It was hard to believe, as she set down the tray,
that it was the same slavey. She actually made
out the bill there and then on her own initiative.
\S  5:81  Mur
\N12 Murphy pushed the tray away, tilted back his
chair and considered his lunch with reverence
and satisfaction. With reverence, because as an
adherent (on and off) of the extreme theophanism
of William of Champeaux he could not but feel
humble before such sacrif+ices to his small but
implacable appetite, nor omit the silent grace:
On this part of himself that I am about to
indigest may the Lord have mercy. With satisfaction,
because the supreme moment in his
degradations had come, the moment when,
unaided and alone, he defrauded a vested
interest. The sum involved was small, something
between a penny and twopence (on the
retail valuation). But then he had only fourpence
worth of conf+idence to play with. His
attitude simply was, that if a swindle of from
\P  5:82  Mur
\N1 twenty-f+ive to f+ifty per cent of the outlay, and
effected while you wait, was not a case of the
large returns and quick turnover indicated by
Suk, then there was a serious f+law somewhere in
his theory of sharp practice. But no matter how
the transaction were judged from the economic
point of view, nothing could detract from its
merit as a little triumph of tactics in the face
of the most fearful odds. Only compare the
belligerents.On the one hand a colossal league
of plutomanic caterers, highly endowed with the
ruthless cunning of the sane, having at their
disposal all the most deadly weapons of the post-war
recovery; on the other, a seedy solipsist and
fourpence.
\S  5:82  Mur
\N16 The seedy solipsist then, having said his silent
grace and savoured his infamy in advance, drew
up his chair briskly to the table, seized the cup
of tea and half emptied it at one gulp. No sooner
had this gone to the right place than he began
to splutter, eructate and complain, as though he
had been duped into swallowing a saturated
solution of powdered glass. In this way he
attracted to himself the attention not only of
every customer in the saloon but actually of the
waitress Vera, who came running to get a good
view of the accident, as she supposed. Murphy
continued for a little to make sounds as of a
\P  5:83  Mur
\N1 f+lushing-box taxed beyond its powers and then
said, in an egg and scorpion voice:
\S  5:83  Mur
\N3 "[I ask for China and you give me Indian."]
\S  5:83  Mur
\N4 Though disappointed that it was nothing more
interesting, Vera made no bones about making
good her mistake. She was a willing little bit
of sweated labour, incapable of betraying the
slogan of her slavers, that since the customer or
sucker was paying for his gutrot ten times what
it cost to produce and f+ive times what it cost to
f+ling in his face, it was only reasonable to defer
to his complaints up to but not exceeding f+ifty
per cent of his exploitation.
\S  5:83  Mur
\N14 With the fresh cup of tea Murphy adopted
quite a new technique. He drank not more than
a third of it and then waited till Vera happened
to be passing.
\S  5:83  Mur
\N18 "[I am most fearfully sorry,"] he said, "[Vera,
to give you all this trouble, but do you think it
would be possible to have this f+illed with hot?"]
\S  5:83  Mur
\N21 Vera showing signs of bridling, Murphy uttered
winningly the sesame.
\S  5:83  Mur
\N23 "[I know I am a great nuisance, but they have
been too generous with the cowjuice."]
\S  5:83  Mur
\N25 Generous and cowjuice were the keywords
here. No waitress could hold out against their
mingled overtones of gratitude and mammary
organs. And Vera was essentially a waitress.
\P  5:84  Mur
\S  5:84  Mur
\N1 That is the end of how Murphy defrauded a
vested interest every day for his lunch, to the
honourable extent of paying for one cup of tea
and consuming 1|.83+. cups approximately.
\S  5:84  Mur
\N5 Try it sometime, gentle skimmer.
\S  5:84  Mur
\N6 He was now feeling so much better that he
conceived the bold project of reserving the
biscuits for later in the afternoon. He would
f+inish the tea, then have as much free milk and
sugar as he could lay his hands on, then walk
carefully to the Cockpit and there eat the
biscuits. Someone in Oxford Street might offer
him a position of the highest trust. He settled
down to plan how exactly he would get from
where he was to Tottenham Court Road, what
cutting reply he would make to the magnate and
in what order he would eat the biscuits when
the time came. He had proceeded no further
than the British Museum and was recruiting
himself in the Archaic Room before the Harpy
Tomb, when a sharp surface thrust against his
nose caused him to open his eyes. This proved
to be a visiting-card which was at once withdrawn
so that he might read:
\S  5:84  Mur
\N25 Austin Ticklepenny
Pot Poet
From the County of Dublin
\S  5:84  Mur
\N28 This creature does not merit any particular
\P  5:85  Mur
\N1 description. The merest pawn in the game
between Murphy and his stars, he makes his
little move, engages an issue and is swept from
the board. Further use may conceivably be
found for Austin Ticklepenny in a child's halma
or a book-reviewer's snakes and ladders, but his
chess days are over. There is no return game
between a man and his stars.
\S  5:85  Mur
\N9 "[When I failed to gain your attention,"] said
Ticklepenny, "[by means of what the divine son
of Ariston calls the vocal stream issuing from the
soul through the lips, I took the liberty as you
notice."]
\S  5:85  Mur
\N14 Murphy drained his cup and made to rise.
But Ticklepenny trapped his legs under the table
and said:
\S  5:85  Mur
\N17 "[Fear not, I have ceased to sing."]
\S  5:85  Mur
\N18 Murphy had such an enormous contempt for
rape that he found it no trouble to go quite limp
at the f+irst sign of its application. He did so
now.
\S  5:85  Mur
\N22 "[Yes,"] said Ticklepenny, "[\inulla\r \ilinea\r \isine\r \idie\r.
Would I be here if I were not on the water-tumbril?
I would not."]
\S  5:85  Mur
\N25 He worked up to such a pitch his gambadoes
under the table that Murphy's memory began
to vibrate.
\S  5:85  Mur
\N28 "[Didn't I have the dishonour once in Dublin,"]
\P  5:86  Mur
\N1 he said. "[Can it have been at the
Gate?"]
\S  5:86  Mur
\N3 "[\iRomiet\r,"] said Ticklepenny, "[\iand\r \iJuleo\r. \`Take
him and cut him out in little stars .+.+.\' Wotanope!"]
\S  5:86  Mur
\N6 Murphy dimly remembered an opportune
apothecary.
\S  5:86  Mur
\N8 "[I was snout drunk,"] said Ticklepenny.
"[You were dead drunk."]
\S  5:86  Mur
\N10 Now the sad truth was that Murphy never
touched it. This was bound to come out sooner
or later.
\S  5:86  Mur
\N13 "[Unless you want me to call a policewoman,"]
said Murphy, "[cease your clumsy genustuprations."]
\S  5:86  Mur
\N16 Woman was the keyword here.
\S  5:86  Mur
\N17 "[My liver dried up,"] said Ticklepenny, "[so
I had to hang up my lyre."]
\S  5:86  Mur
\N19 "[And let yourself go fundamentally,"] said
Murphy.
\S  5:86  Mur
\N21 "[Messrs\. Melpomene, Calliope, Erato and
Thalia,"] said Ticklepenny, "[in that order, woo
me in vain since my change of life."]
\S  5:86  Mur
\N24 "[Then you know how I feel,"] said Murphy.
\S  5:86  Mur
\N25 "[That same Ticklepenny,"] said Ticklepenny,
"[who for more years than he cares to remember
turned out his steady pentameter per pint, day
in, day out, is now degraded to the position of
\P  5:87  Mur
\N1 male nurse in a hospital for the better-class
mentally deranged. It is the same Ticklepenny,
but God bless my soul \iquantum\r \imutatus\r."]
\S  5:87  Mur
\N4 "[\iAb\r \iilla\r,"] said Murphy.
\S  5:87  Mur
\N5 "[I sit on them that will not eat,"] said Ticklepenny,
"[jacking their jaws apart with the gag,
spurning their tongues aside with the spatula,
till the last tundish of drench is absorbed. I go
round the cells with my shovel and bucket, I-+--+-"]
\S  5:87  Mur
\N10 Ticklepenny broke down, took indeed a large
draught of his lemon phosphate, and altogether
ceased his wooing under the table. Murphy
could not take advantage of this to go, being
stunned by the sudden clash between two hitherto
distinct motifs in Suk's delineations, that of
lunatic in paragraph two and that of custodian
in paragraph seven.
\S  5:87  Mur
\N18 "[I cannot stand it,"] groaned Ticklepenny, "[it
is driving me mad."]
\S  5:87  Mur
\N20 It is hard to say where the fault lies in the
case of Ticklepenny, whether with the soul, the
stream or the lips, but certainly the quality of his
speech is most wretched. Celia's conf+idence to
Mr\. Kelly, Neary's to Wylie, had to be given for
the most part obliquely. With all the more
reason now, Ticklepenny's to Murphy. It will
not take many moments.
\S  5:87  Mur
\N28 After much hesitation Ticklepenny consulted
\P  5:88  Mur
\N1 a Dublin physician, a Dr\. Fist more philosophical
than medical, German on his father's side.
Dr\. Fist said: "[Giff de pooze ub or go kaputt."]
Ticklepenny said he would give up the booze.
Dr\. Fist laughed copiously and said: "[I giff
yous a shit to Killiecrrrankie."] Dr\. Angus
Killiecrankie was R\.M\.S\. to an institution on
the outskirts of London known as the Magdalen
Mental Mercyseat. The chit proposed that
Ticklepenny, a distinguished indigent drunken
Irish bard, should make himself useful about
the place in return for a mild course of dipsopathic
discipline.
\S  5:88  Mur
\N14 Ticklepenny responded so rapidly to this
arrangement that the rumour of a misdiagnosis
began to raise its horrid head in the M\.M\.M\.,
until Dr\. Fist wrote from Dublin explaining
that the curative factor at work in this interesting
case was to be sought neither in the dipsopathy
nor in the bottlewashing, but in the freedom
from poetic composition that these conferred
on his client, whose breakdown had been due
less to the pints than to the pentameters.
\S  5:88  Mur
\N24 This view of the matter will not seem strange
to anyone familiar with the class of pentameter
that Ticklepenny felt it his duty to Erin to
compose, as free as a canary in the f+ifth foot
(a cruel sacrif+ice, for Ticklepenny hiccuped in
\P  5:89  Mur
\N1 end rimes) and at the ca+esura as hard and fast
as his own divine f+latus and otherwise bulging
with as many minor beauties from the gaelic
prosodoturfy as could be sucked out of a mug
of Beamish's porter. No wonder he felt a new
man washing the bottles and emptying the
slops of the better-class mentally deranged.
\S  5:89  Mur
\N8 But all good things come to an end and
Ticklepenny was offered a job in the wards
at the seneschalesque f+igure of f+ive pounds a
month all found. He accepted. He no longer
had the spirit to refuse. The Olympian sot
had reverted to the temperate potboy.
\S  5:89  Mur
\N14 Now after a bare week in the wards he felt
he could not go on. He did not mind having
his pity and even his terror titillated within
reason, but the longing to vomit with compassion
and anxiety struck him as repugnant
to the true catharsis, especially as he could never
bring anything up.
\S  5:89  Mur
\N21 Ticklepenny was immeasurably inferior to
Neary in every way, but they had certain points
of contrast with Murphy in common. One was
this pretentious fear of going mad. Another
was the inability to look on, no matter what
the spectacle. These were connected, in the
sense that the painful situation could always
be reduced to onlooking of one kind or another.
\P  5:90  Mur
\N1 But even here Neary was superior to Ticklepenny,
at least according to the tradition that
ranks the competitor's spirit higher than the
huckster's and the man regretting what he cannot
have higher than the man sneering at what
he cannot understand. For Neary knew his
great master's f+igure of the three lives, whereas
Ticklepenny knew nothing.
\S  5:90  Mur
\N9 Wylie came a little closer to Murphy, but his
way of looking was as different from Murphy's
as a \ivoyeur's\r from a \ivoyant's\r, though Wylie was
no more the one in the indecent sense than
Murphy was the other in the supradecent sense.
The terms are only taken to distinguish between
the vision that depends on light, object, view-point,
etc\., and the vision that all those things
embarrass. In the days when Murphy was
concerned with seeing Miss Counihan, he had
had to close his eyes to do so. And even now
when he closed them there was no guarantee
that Miss Counihan would not appear. That
was Murphy's really yellow spot. Similarly he
had seen Celia for the f+irst time, not when she
revolved before him in the way that so delighted
Mr\. Kelly, but while she was away consulting
the Reach. It was as though some instinct had
withheld her from accosting him in form until
he should have obtained a clear view of her
\P  5:91  Mur
\N1 advantages, and warned her that before he
could see it had to be not merely dark, but
his own dark. Murphy believed there was no
dark quite like his own dark.
\S  5:91  Mur
\N5 Ticklepenny's pompous dread of being driven
mad by the spectacle constantly before him of
those that were so already, made him long most
heartily to throw up his job as male nurse at
the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat. But as he
had been admitted on probation for the term
of one month, nothing less than a month's service
would produce any pay. To throw up the
job at the end of a week or a fortnight or any
period less than the period of probation would
mean no compensation for all he had suffered.
And between going mad and having the rest of
his life poisoned by the thought of having once
worked for a week for nothing, Ticklepenny
found little to choose.
\S  5:91  Mur
\N20 Even the M\.M\.M\. found it no easier than
other mental hospitals to procure nurses. This
was one reason for the enlistment of Ticklepenny,
whose only qualif+ications for handling
the mentally deranged were the pot poet's bulk
and induration to abuse. For even in the
M\.M\.M\. there were not many patients so divorced
from reality that they could not discern and
vituperate a Ticklepenny in their midst.
\P  5:92  Mur
\S  5:92  Mur
\N1 When Ticklepenny had quite done commiserating
himself, in a snivelling antiphony
between the cruel necessity of going mad if he
stayed and the cruel impossibility of leaving
without his wages, Murphy said:
\S  5:92  Mur
\N6 "[Supposing you were to produce a substitute
of my intelligence"] (corrugating his brow) "[and
physique"] (squaring the circle of his shoulders),
"[what then?"]
\S  5:92  Mur
\N10 These words sent the whole of Ticklepenny
into transports, but no part of him so horribly
as his knees, which began to fawn under the
table. Even so a delighted dog will sometimes
forget himself.
\S  5:92  Mur
\N15 When this had exhausted itself he begged
Murphy to accompany him without a moment's
delay to the M\.M\.M\. and be signed on, as though
the possibility of opposition on the part of the
authorities to this lightning change in their
personnel were too remote to be considered.
Murphy also was inclined to think that the
arrangement would f+ind immediate favour,
assuming that Ticklepenny had concealed no
material factor in the situation, such as a liaison
with some high off+icial, the head male nurse
for example. Short of being such a person's
minion, Murphy was inclined to think there
was nothing Ticklepenny could do that he could
\P  5:93  Mur
\N1 not do a great deal better, especially in a society
of psychotics, and that they had merely to appear
together before the proper authority for this to
be patent.
\S  5:93  Mur
\N5 But what made Murphy feel really conf+ident
was the sudden syzygy in Suk's delineations of
lunatic in paragraph two and custodian in
paragraph seven. Of these considered separately
up to date the f+irst had seemed a mere
monthly prognosticator's tag, compelled by the
presence of the moon in the Serpent, and the
second a truism on the part of his stars. Now
their union made the nativity appear as f+inely
correlated in all its parts as the system from
which it purported to come.
\S  5:93  Mur
\N16 Thus this sixpence worth of sky, from the
ludicrous broadsheet that Murphy had called
his life-warrant, his bull of incommunication
and corpus of deterrents, changed into the poem
that he alone of the living could write. He
drew out the black envelope, grasped it to
tear it across, then put it back in his pocket,
mindful of his memory, and that he was not
alone. He said he would present himself at
the M\.M\.M\. the following Sunday morning,
whenever that was, which would give Ticklepenny
time to manure the ground. Ticklepenny
would not go mad before that day of
\P  5:94  Mur
\N1 rest so favourable to Murphy. To those in
fear of losing it, reason stuck like a bur. And
to those in hope .+.+.?
\S  5:94  Mur
\N4 "[Call me Austin,"] said Ticklepenny, "[or
even Augustin."] He felt the time was hardly
ripe for Gussy, or even Gus.
\S  5:94  Mur
\N7 Having now been seated for over an hour
without any ill effects, carried through his daily
fraud and found a use for a pot poet, Murphy
felt he had earned the long rapture f+lat on his
back in that most pleasant of natural laps
available, the Cockpit in Hyde Park. The need
for this had been steadily increasing, now in
a f+inal spasm of urgency it tore him away
from Ticklepenny, into the Gray's Inn Road.
Under the table the legs continued to fawn,
as a fowl to writhe long after its head has been
removed, on a void place and a spacious nothing.
\S  5:94  Mur
\N19 Vera, remarking that he did not call at the
cash-desk on his way out and that his bill lay
where she had put it, supposed the onus of
payment to have fallen on the friend. However
she made quite sure that it would not fall on
her by putting the two bills together when
she made out the second. All this happened as
Murphy had foreseen. The comfort he had been
to Ticklepenny was dirt cheap at fourpence.
\S  5:94  Mur
\N28 Half the f+ilth thus saved went on a bus to
\P  5:95  Mur
\N1 the Marble Arch. He told the conductor to
tell him when they got there, so that he might
close his eyes and keep them closed. This
cancelled the magnate in Oxford Street, but
what were magnates to a man whose future
was assured? And as for the Harpy Tomb,
by closing his eyes he could be in an archaic
world very much less corrupt than anything
on view in the B\.M\. Crawling and jerking
along in the bus he tried to think of Celia's face
when she heard of the engagement, he even
tried to think of the engagement itself, but
his skull felt packed with gelatine and he could
not think of anything.
\S  5:95  Mur
\N15 Murphy adored many things, to think of him
as sad or blase+' would be to do him an injustice
or too much honour. One of the many things
that he adored was a ride in one of the new
six-wheelers when the traff+ic was at its height.
The deep oversprung seats were most insidious,
especially forward. A staple recreation before
Celia had been to wait at Walham Green for
a nice number eleven and take it through the
evening rush to Liverpool Street and back,
sitting downstairs behind the driver on the near
side. But now with Celia to support, and Miss
Carridge making her own of his uncle's interests,
this pleasure lay beyond his means.
\P  5:96  Mur
\S  5:96  Mur
\N1 Near the Cockpit a guffawing group was
watching Rima being cleaned of a copious
pollution of red permanganate. Murphy receded
a little way into the north and prepared to
f+inish his lunch. He took the biscuits carefully
out of the packet and laid them face upward
on the grass, in order as he felt of edibility.
They were the same as always, a Ginger, an
Osborne, a Digestive, a Petit Beurre and one
anonymous. He always ate the f+irst-named
last, because he liked it the best, and the
anonymous f+irst, because he thought it very
likely the least palatable. The order in which
he ate the remaining three was indifferent
to him and varied irregularly from day to day.
On his knees now before the f+ive it struck him
for the f+irst time that these prepossessions reduced
to a paltry six the number of ways in which
he could make this meal. But this was to violate
the very essence of assortment, this was red
permanganate on the Rima of variety. Even
if he conquered his prejudice against the anonymous,
still there would be only twenty-four
ways in which the biscuits could be eaten. But
were he to take the f+inal step and overcome
his infatuation with the ginger, then
the assortment would spring to life before
him, dancing the radiant measure of its total
\P  5:97  Mur
\N1 permutability, edible in a hundred and twenty
ways!
\S  5:97  Mur
\N3 Overcome, by these perspectives Murphy fell
forward on his face on the grass, beside those
biscuits of which it could be said as truly as
of the stars, that one differed from another,
but of which he could not partake in their
fullness until he had learnt not to prefer any
one to any other. Lying beside them on the
grass but facing the opposite way, wrestling
with the demon of gingerbread, he heard the
words:
\S  5:97  Mur
\N13 "[Would you have the goodness, pardon the
intrusion, to hold my little doggy?"]
\S  5:97  Mur
\N15 Seen from above and behind Murphy did
look fairly obliging, the kind of stranger one's
little doggy would not mind being held by. He
sat up and found himself at the feet of a low-sized
corpulent middle-aged woman with very
bad duck's disease indeed.
\S  5:97  Mur
\N21 Duck's disease is a distressing pathological
condition in which the thighs are suppressed
and the buttocks spring directly from behind
the knees, aptly described in Steiss's nosonomy
as Panpygoptosis. Happily its incidence is small
and conf+ined, as the popular name suggests, to
the weaker vessel, a bias of Nature bitterly
lamented by the celebrated Dr\. Busby and other
\P  5:98  Mur
\N1 less pedantic notables. It is non-contagious
(though some observers have held the contrary),
non-infectious, non-heritable, painless and intractable.
Its a+etiology remains obscure to all
but the psychopathological wholehogs, who have
shown it to be simply another embodiment
of the neurotic \iNon\r \ime\r \irebus\r \ised\r \imihi\r \ires\r.
\S  5:98  Mur
\N8 The Duck, to give her a name to go on with,
held in one hand a large bulging bag and in
the other a lead whereby her personality was
extended to a Dachshund so low and so long
that Murphy had no means of telling whether
it was a dog or a bitch, which was the f+irst
thing he always wanted to know about every
so-called dog that came before him. It certainly
had the classical bitch's eye, kiss me in the
cornea, keep me in the iris and God help you
in the pupil. But some dogs had that.
\S  5:98  Mur
\N19 Murphy's front did not bear out the promise
of his rear, but the Duck had gone too far to
draw back.
\S  5:98  Mur
\N22 "[Nelly is in heat,"] she said, without the
least trace of affectation, in a voice both proud
and sad, and paused for Murphy to congratulate
or condole, according to his lights.
When he did neither she simply laid down
her hand.
\S  5:98  Mur
\N28 "[The oui-ja board is how I live, I come all
\P  5:99  Mur
\N1 the way from Paddington to feed the poor dear
sheep and now I dare not let her off, here is
my card, Rosie Dew, single woman, by appointment
to Lord Gall of Wormwood, perhaps you
know him, a charming man, he sends me objects,
he is in a painful position, spado of long standing
in tail male special he seeks testamentary pentimenti
from the \iau-dela+`\r, how she strains to be
off and away, the protector is a man of iron
and will not bar, plunge the fever of her blood
in the Serpentine or the Long Water for that
matter, like Shelley's f+irst wife you know, her
name was Harriet was it not, not Nelly, Shelley,
Nelly, oh Nelly how I ADORE you."]
\S  5:99  Mur
\N15 Shortening her hold on the lead she whipped
up Nelly with great dexterity into the wilds
of her bosom and covered her snout with all
the kisses that Nelly had taught her in the long
evenings. She then handed the trembling animal
to Murphy, took two heads of lettuce out of the
bag and began sidling up to the sheep.
\S  5:99  Mur
\N22 The sheep were a miserable-looking lot, dingy,
close-cropped, undersized and misshapen. They
were not cropping, they were not ruminating,
they did not even seem to be taking their ease.
They simply stood, in an attitude of profound
dejection, their heads bowed, swaying slightly
as though dazed. Murphy had never seen
\P  5:100 Mur
\N1 stranger sheep, they seemed one and all on
the point of collapse. They made the exposition
of Wordsworth's lovely "[f+ields of sleep"] as a
compositor's error for "[f+ields of sheep"] seem
no longer a jibe at that most excellent man.
They had not the strength to back away from
Miss Dew approaching with the lettuce.
\S  5:100 Mur
\N8 She moved freely among them, tendering
the lettuce to one after another, pressing it up
into their sunk snouts with the gesture of one
feeding sugar to a horse. They turned their
broody heads aside from the emetic, bringing
them back into alignment as soon as it passed
from them. Miss Dew strayed further and
further af+ield in her quest for a sheep to eat
her lettuce.
\S  5:100 Mur
\N17 Murphy had been too absorbed in this touching
little argonautic, and above all in the ecstatic
demeanour of the sheep, to pay any attention
to Nelly. He now discovered that she had
eaten all the biscuits with the exception of the
Ginger, which cannot have remained in her
mouth for more than a couple of seconds. She
was seated after her meal, to judge by the inf+initesimal
angle that her back was now making
with the horizon. There is this to be said for
Dachshunds of such length and lowness as
Nelly, that it makes very little difference to
\P  5:101 Mur
\N1 their appearance whether they stand, sit or lie.
If Parmigianino had gone in for painting dogs,
he would have painted them like Nelly.
\S  5:101 Mur
\N4 Miss Dew was now experimenting with quite
a new technique. This consisted in placing her
offering on the ground and withdrawing to a
discreet remove, so that the sheep might separate
in their minds, if that was what they wanted,
the ideas of the giver and the gift. Miss Dew
was not Love, that she could feel one with what
she gave, and perhaps there was some dark
ovine awareness of this, that Miss Dew was
not lettuce, holding up the entire works. But
a sheep's psychology is far less simple than
Miss Dew had any idea, and the lettuce masquerading
as a natural product of the park met
with no more success than when presented
frankly as an exotic variety.
\S  5:101 Mur
\N19 Miss Dew at last was obliged to admit defeat,
a bitter pill to have to swallow before a perfect
stranger. She picked up the two heads of lettuce
and came trundling back on her powerful little
legs to where Murphy was sitting on his heels,
bemoaning his loss. She stood beside him too
abashed to speak, whereas he was too aggrieved
not to.
\S  5:101 Mur
\N27 "[The sheep,"] he said, "[may not fancy your
cabbage-+--+-"]
\P  5:102 Mur
\S  5:102 Mur
\N1 "[Lettuce!"] cried Miss Dew. "[Lovely fresh
clean white crisp sparkling delicious lettuce!"]
\S  5:102 Mur
\N3 "[But your hot dog has eaten my lunch,"]
said Murphy, "[or as much of it as she could
stomach."]
\S  5:102 Mur
\N6 Miss Dew went down on her knees just like any
ordinary person and took Nelly's head in her
hands. Mistress and bitch exchanged a long
look of intelligence.
\S  5:102 Mur
\N10 "[The depravity of her appetite,"] said Murphy,
"[you may be glad to hear, does not extend
to ginger, nor the extremity of mine to a rutting
cur's rejectamenta."]
\S  5:102 Mur
\N14 Miss Dew kneeling looked more than ever
like a duck, or a stunted penguin. Her bosom
rose and fell, her colour came and went, in
consequence of Murphy's reference to Nelly,
who with Lord Gall was almost all she had in
this dreary \ien-dec+,a+`\r, as a rutting cur. Her pet
had certainly placed her in a very false position.
\S  5:102 Mur
\N21 Wylie in Murphy's place might have consoled
himself with the thought that the Park was a
closed system in which there could be no loss of
appetite; Neary with the unction of an \iIpse\r
\idixit\r; Ticklepenny with reprisal. But Murphy
was inconsolable, the snuff of the dip stinking
that the biscuits had lit in his mind, for Nelly
to extinguish.
\P  5:103 Mur
\S  5:103 Mur
\N1 "[Oh, my America,"] he cried, "[my Newfoundland,
no sooner sighted than Atlantis."]
\S  5:103 Mur
\N3 Miss Dew pictured her patron in her place.
\S  5:103 Mur
\N4 "[How much are you out?"] she said.
\S  5:103 Mur
\N5 These words were incomprehensible to Murphy,
and remained so until he saw a purse in her
hand.
\S  5:103 Mur
\N8 "[Twopence,"] he replied, "[and a critique of
pure love."]
\S  5:103 Mur
\N10 "[Here is threepence,"] said Miss Dew.
\S  5:103 Mur
\N11 This brought Murphy's f+ilth up to f+ivepence.
\S  5:103 Mur
\N12 Miss Dew went away without saying goodbye.
She had not left home more gladly than she
now returned sadly. It was often the way. She
trundled along towards Victoria Gate, Nelly
gliding before her, and felt the worse for her
outing. Her lettuce turned down, her mortif+ication,
her pet and herself in her pet insulted,
the threepence gone that she had earmarked
for a glass of mild. She passed by the dahlias
and the dogs' cemetery, out into the sudden
grey glare of Bayswater Road. She caught up
Nelly in her arms and carried her a greater
part of the way to Paddington than was necessary.
A boot was waiting for her from Lord Gall,
a boot formerly in the wardrobe of his father.
She would sit down with Nelly in her lap, one
hand on the boot, the other on the board, and
\P  5:104 Mur
\N1 wrest from the ether some good reason for the
protector, who was also the reversioner unfortunately,
to cut off the cruel entail.
\S  5:104 Mur
\N4 Miss Dew's control, a panpygoptotic Manichee
of the fourth century, Lena by name, severe
of deportment and pallid of feature, who had
entertained Jerome on his way through Rome
from Calchis to Bethlehem, had not, according
to her own account, been raised so wholly a
spiritual body as yet to sit down with much
more comfort than she had in the natural. But
she declared that every century brought a
marked improvement and urged Miss Dew to
be of good courage. In a thousand years she
might look forward to having thighs like anyone
else, and not merely thighs, but thighs celestial.
\S  5:104 Mur
\N17 Miss Dew was no ordinary hack medium, her
methods were original and eclectic. She might
not be able to bring down torrents of ectoplasm
or multiply anemones from her armpits, but
left undisturbed with one hand on a disaffected
boot, the other on the board, Nelly in her lap
and Lena coming through, she could make the
dead softsoap the quick in seven languages.
\S  5:104 Mur
\N25 Murphy continued to sit on his heels for some
little time, playing with the f+ive pennies, speculating
on Miss Dew, speculating on the sheep with
whom he felt in close sympathy, deprecating
\P  5:105 Mur
\N1 this prejudice and that, arraigning his love of
Celia. In vain. The freedom of indifference,
the indifference of freedom, the will dust in the
dust of its object, the act a handful of sand let
fall-+-these were some of the shapes he had
sighted, sunset landfall after many days. But
now all was nebulous and dark, a murk of
irritation from which no spark could be excogitated.
He therefore went to the other extreme,
disconnected his mind from the gross importunities
of sensation and ref+lection and composed
himself on the hollow of his back for the torpor
he had been craving to enter for the past f+ive
hours. He had been unavoidably detained, by
Ticklepenny, by Miss Dew, by his efforts to
rekindle the light that Nelly had quenched.
But now there seemed nothing to stop him.
Nothing can stop me now, was his last thought
before he lapsed into consciousness, and nothing
will stop me. In effect, nothing did turn up
to stop him and he slipped away, from the
pensums and prizes, from Celia, chandlers,
public highways, etc\., from Celia, buses, public
gardens, etc\., to where there were no pensums
and no prizes, but only Murphy himself,
improved out of all knowledge.
\S  5:105 Mur
\N27 When he came to, or rather from, how he
had no idea, he found night fallen, a full
\P  5:106 Mur
\N1 moon risen and the sheep gathered round him,
a drift of pale uneasy shapes, suggesting how
he might have been roused. They seemed in
rather better form, less Wordsworthy, resting,
ruminating and even cropping. What they
had rejected was therefore not Miss Dew, nor
her cabbage, but simply the hour of day. He
thought of the four caged owls in Battersea
Park, whose joys and sorrows did not begin
till dusk.
\S  5:106 Mur
\N11 He bared his eyes to the moon, he forced
back the lids with his f+ingers, the yellow oozed
under them into his skull, a belch came wet
and foul from the green old days-+-
\S  5:106 Mur
\N15 \iGazed\r \ion\r \iunto\r \imy\r \isetting\r \ifrom\r \imy\r \irise\r \/
\iAlmost\r \iof\r \inone\r \ibut\r \iof\r \iunquiet\r \ieyes\r-+-,
\S  5:106 Mur
\N17 he spat, rose and hastened back to Celia, with
all the speed that f+ivepence could command. No
doubt his news was good, according to her God,
but it had been a trying day for Murphy in the
body and he was more than usually impatient
for the music to begin. It was long past his
usual hour when he arrived, to f+ind, not a meal
spoiling as he had hoped and feared, but Celia
spreadeagled on her face on the bed.
\S  5:106 Mur
\N26 A shocking thing had happened.
\L  6:107 Mur
\N1 \iAmor\r \iintellectualis\r \iquo\r \iMurphy\r \ise\r \iipsum\r \iamat\r.
\S  6:107 Mur
\N2 IT is most unfortunate, but the point of this
story has been reached where a justif+ication
of the expression "[Murphy's mind"] has to
be attempted. Happily we need not concern
ourselves with this apparatus as it really was|
-+-that would be an extravagance and an impertinence-+-|
but solely with what it felt and
pictured itself to be. Murphy's mind is after
all the gravamen of these informations. A short
section to itself at this stage will relieve us from
the necessity of apologising for it further.
\S  6:107 Mur
\N13 Murphy's mind pictured itself as a large
hollow sphere, hermetically closed to the universe
without. This was not an impoverishment, for
it excluded nothing that it did not itself contain.
Nothing ever had been, was or would be in
the universe outside it but was already present
as virtual, or actual, or virtual rising into actual,
or actual falling into virtual, in the universe
inside it.
\P  6:108 Mur
\S  6:108 Mur
\N1 This did not involve Murphy in the idealist
tar. There was the mental fact and there was the
physical fact, equally real if not equally pleasant.
\S  6:108 Mur
\N4 He distinguished between the actual and the
virtual of his mind, not as between form and
the formless yearning for form, but as between
that of which he had both mental and physical
experience and that of which he had mental
experience only. Thus the form of kick was
actual, that of caress virtual.
\S  6:108 Mur
\N11 The mind felt its actual part to be above and
bright, its virtual beneath and fading into dark,
without however connecting this with the ethical
yoyo. The mental experience was cut off from
the physical experience, its criteria were not
those of the physical experience, the agreement
of part of its content with physical fact did not
confer worth on that part. It did not function
and could not be disposed according to a principle
of worth. It was made up of light fading into
dark, of above and beneath, but not of good
and bad. It contained forms with parallel
in another mode and forms without, but not
right forms and wrong forms. It felt no issue
between its light and dark, no need for its light
to devour its dark. The need was now to be
in the light, now in the half light, now in the
dark. That was all.
\P  6:109 Mur
\S  6:109 Mur
\N1 Thus Murphy felt himself split in two, a
body and a mind. They had intercourse apparently,
otherwise he could not have known that
they had anything in common. But he felt
his mind to be bodytight and did not understand
through what channel the intercourse was
effected nor how the two experiences came to
overlap. He was satisf+ied that neither followed
from the other. He neither thought a kick
because he felt one nor felt a kick because he
thought one. Perhaps the knowledge was related
to the fact of the kick as two magnitudes
to a third. Perhaps there was, outside space
and time, a non-mental non-physical Kick
from all eternity, dimly revealed to Murphy
in its correlated modes of consciousness and
extension, the kick \iin\r \iintellectu\r and the kick
\iin\r \ire\r. But where then was the supreme Caress?
\S  6:109 Mur
\N19 However that might be, Murphy was content
to accept this partial congruence of the world
of his mind with the world of his body as due
to some such process of supernatural determination.
The problem was of little interest. Any
solution would do that did not clash with the
feeling, growing stronger as Murphy grew older,
that his mind was a closed system, subject to
no principle of change but its own, self-suff+icient
and impermeable to the vicissitudes of the body.
\P  6:110 Mur
\N1 Of inf+initely more interest than how this came
to be so was the manner in which it might be
exploited.
\S  6:110 Mur
\N4 He was split, one part of him never left this
mental chamber that pictured itself as a sphere
full of light fading into dark, because there was
no way out. But motion in this world depended
on rest in the world outside. A man is in bed,
wanting to sleep. A rat is behind the wall at
his head, wanting to move. The man hears
the rat f+idget and cannot sleep, the rat hears
the man f+idget and dares not move. They are
both unhappy, one f+idgeting and the other
waiting, or both happy, the rat moving and the
man sleeping.
\S  6:110 Mur
\N16 Murphy could think and know after a fashion
with his body up (so to speak) and about, with
a kind of mental \itic\r \idouloureux\r suff+icient for his
parody of rational behaviour. But that was
not what he understood by consciousness.
\S  6:110 Mur
\N21 His body lay down more and more in a less
precarious abeyance than that of sleep, for its
own convenience and so that the mind might
move. There seemed little left of this body
that was not privy to this mind, and that little
was usually tired on its own account. The
development of what looked like collusion between
such utter strangers remained to Murphy
\P  6:111 Mur
\N1 as unintelligible as telekinesis or the Leyden
Jar, and of as little interest. He noted with
satisfaction that it existed, that his bodily need
ran more and more with his mental.
\S  6:111 Mur
\N5 As he lapsed in body he felt himself coming
alive in mind, set free to move among its
treasures. The body has its stock, the mind
its treasures.
\S  6:111 Mur
\N9 There were the three zones, light, half light,
dark, each with its speciality.
\S  6:111 Mur
\N11 In the f+irst were the forms with parallel, a
radiant abstract of the dog's life, the elements
of physical experience available for a new
arrangement. Here the pleasure was reprisal,
the pleasure of reversing the physical experience.
Here the kick that the physical Murphy received,
the mental Murphy gave. It was the same
kick, but corrected as to direction. Here the
chandlers were available for slow depilation,
Miss Carridge for rape by Ticklepenny, and
so on. Here the whole physical f+iasco became
a howling success.
\S  6:111 Mur
\N23 In the second were the forms without parallel.
Here the pleasure was contemplation. This
system had no other mode in which to be out
of joint and therefore did not need to be put
right in this. Here was the Belacqua bliss and
others scarcely less precise.
\P  6:112 Mur
\S  6:112 Mur
\N1 In both these zones of his private world
Murphy felt sovereign and free, in the one to
requite himself, in the other to move as he
pleased from one unparalleled beatitude to
another. There was no rival initiative.
\S  6:112 Mur
\N6 The third, the dark, was a f+lux of forms, a
perpetual coming together and falling asunder
of forms. The light contained the docile elements
of a new manifold, the world of the body
broken up into the pieces of a toy; the half
light, states of peace. But the dark neither
elements nor states, nothing but forms becoming
and crumbling into the fragments of a new
becoming, without love or hate or any intelligible
principle of change. Here there was
nothing but commotion and the pure forms of
commotion. Here he was not free, but a mote
in the dark of absolute freedom. He did not
move, he was a point in the ceaseless unconditioned
generation and passing away of line.
\S  6:112 Mur
\N21 Matrix of surds.
\S  6:112 Mur
\N22 It was pleasant to kick the Ticklepennies
and Miss Carridges simultaneously together into
ghastly acts of love. It was pleasant to lie
dreaming on the shelf beside Belacqua,
watching the dawn break crooked. But how
much more pleasant was the sensation of being
a missile without provenance or target, caught
\P  6:113 Mur
\N1 up in a tumult of non-Newtonian motion. So
pleasant that pleasant was not the word.
\S  6:113 Mur
\N3 Thus as his body set him free more and more
in his mind, he took to spending less and less
time in the light, spitting at the breakers of
the world; and less in the half light, where
the choice of bliss introduced an element of
effort; and more and more and more in the
dark, in the will-lessness, a mote in its absolute
freedom.
\S  6:113 Mur
\N11 This painful duty having now been discharged,
no further bulletins will be issued.
\L  7:114 Mur
\N1 CELIA's triumph over Murphy, following her
conf+idence to her grandfather, was gained about
the middle of September, Thursday the 12th
to be pedantic, a little before the Ember Days,
the sun being still in the Virgin. Wylie rescued
Neary, consoled and advised him, a week later,
as the sun with a sigh of relief passed over into
the Balance. The encounter, on which so much
unhinges, between Murphy and Ticklepenny,
took place on Friday, October the 11th (though
Murphy did not know that), the moon being
full again, but not nearly so near the earth
as when last in opposition.
\S  7:114 Mur
\N14 Let us now take Time that old fornicator,
bald though he be behind, by such few sad short
hairs as he has, back to Monday, October the 7th,
the f+irst day of his restitution to the bewitching
Miss Greenwich.
\S  7:114 Mur
\N19 Respectable people were going to bed.
\S  7:114 Mur
\N20 Mr\. Willoughby Kelly lay back. The sail of
his kite was crimson silk, worn and wan with
\P  7:115 Mur
\N1 much exposure. He had been mending it with
needle and thread, he could do no more, it
lay a large hexagon of crimson on the counterpane,
freed from its asterisk of sticks. Mr\.
Kelly himself did not look a day over ninety,
cascades of light from the bed-lamp fell on the
hairless domes and bosses of his skull, scored
his ravaged face with shadow. He found it
hard to think, his body seemed spread over a
vast area, parts would wander away and get
lost if he did not keep a sharp look-out, he felt
them f+idgeting to be off. He was vigilant and
agitated, his vigilance was agitated, he made
snatches and darts in his mind at this part
and that. He found it hard to think, impossible
to expand the sad pun (for he had excellent
French): \iCelia\r, \is'il\r \iy\r \ia\r, \iCelia\r, \is'il\r \iy\r \ia\r, throbbing
steadily behind his eyes. To be punning her
name consoled him a little, a very little. What
had he done to her, that she did not come to
see him any more? Now I have no one, said
Mr\. Kelly, not even Celia. The human eyelid
is not teartight, the craters between nose and
cheekbones trapped the precious moisture, no
other lachrymatory was necessary.
\S  7:115 Mur
\N27 Neary also had no one, not even Cooper.
He sat in Glasshouse Street, huddled in the
\P  7:116 Mur
\N1 tod of his troubles like an owl in ivy, inundating
with green tea a bellyful of bird's-nest soup,
chop suey, noodles, sharks' f+ins and ly-chee
syrup. He was sad, with the snarling sadness
of the choleric man. With the chop-sticks
held like bones between his f+ingers he kept up
a low battuta of anger.
\S  7:116 Mur
\N8 His problem was not only how to f+ind Murphy,
but how to f+ind him without being found himself
by Adriadne ne+'e Cox. It was like looking for
a needle in a haystack full of vipers. The town
was alive with her touts, with her multitudinous
self, and he was alone. In a moment of fury
he had cast off Cooper, whom now when he
longed to have back he could not f+ind. He
had written begging Wylie to come and support
him, with his resource, his practical ingenuity,
his \isavoir\r \ifaire\r, his \isavoir\r \ine\r \ipas\r \ifaire\r, all those
vulpine endowments that Neary did not possess.
To which Wylie had replied, very truly, that
Miss Counihan was a wholetime job and the
straightening of Neary's way a harder nut to
crack than he had anticipated. This letter
f+illed Neary with a new misgiving. He had
been let down by Cooper, a tried and trusted
servant; with how much more likelihood then
by Wylie, whom he scarcely knew. All of a
sudden Murphy, his quarry, seemed the only
\P  7:117 Mur
\N1 man of all his acquaintance, of all the men he
had ever known, who would not fail in his
trust to a man, however badly he might seem
treat women. Thus his need for Murphy
changed. It could not be more urgent than it
was, it had to lose with reference to the rival
what it gained with reference to the friend.
The horse leech's daughter was a closed system.
\S  7:117 Mur
\N9 He sat on, shaking his head like a perhaps
empty bottle, muttering bitterly with the chop-sticks,
and a sorer lack than any wife or even
mistress, were she Yang Kuei-fei herself, was a
mind to pillow his beside. The Oriental milieu
had no doubt to do with this aberration. The
ly-chee, of which he had taken three portions,
continued to elaborate its nameless redolence,
a dusk of lute music behind his troubles.
\S  7:117 Mur
\N19 Miss Counihan sat on Wylie's knees, \inot\r in
Wynn's Hotel lest an action for libel should
lie, and oyster kisses passed between them.
Wylie did not often kiss, but when he did it
was a serious matter. He was not one of those
lugubrious persons who insist on removing the
clapper from the bell of passion. A kiss from
Wylie was like a breve tied, in a long slow
amorous phrase, over bars' times its equivalent
in demi-semiquavers. Miss Counihan had never
\P  7:118 Mur
\N1 enjoyed anything quite so much as this slow-motion
osmosis of love's spittle.
\S  7:118 Mur
\N3 The above passage is carefully calculated to
deprave the cultivated reader.
\S  7:118 Mur
\N5 For an Irish girl Miss Counihan was quite
exceptionally anthropoid. Wylie was not sure
that he cared altogether for her mouth, which
was a large one. The kissing surface was
greater than the rosebud's, but less highly
toned. Otherwise she did. It is superf+luous
to describe her, she was just like any other
beautiful Irish girl, except, as noted, more
markedly anthropoid. How far this constitutes
an advantage is what every man must decide
for himself.
\S  7:118 Mur
\N16 Enter Cooper. Like a mollusc torn from its
rock Wylie came away. Miss Counihan staunched
her mouth. Wylie would not have broken off his
love game for Cooper, any more than for an animal,
but he feared lest Neary also were at hand.
\S  7:118 Mur
\N21 "[I do be turned off,"] said Cooper.
\S  7:118 Mur
\N22 Wylie grasped the situation in a f+lash. He
turned reassuringly to the still panting Miss
Counihan and said:
\S  7:118 Mur
\N25 "[Do not be alarmed, my dear. This is
Cooper, Neary's man. He never knocks, nor
sits, nor takes his hat off. No doubt he has
news of Murphy."]
\P  7:119 Mur
\S  7:119 Mur
\N1 "[Oh, if you have,"] cried Miss Counihan,
"[if you have news of my love, speak, speak
I adjure you."] She was an omnivorous reader.
\S  7:119 Mur
\N4 It was true that Cooper never sat, his acathisia
was deep-seated and of long standing. It was
indifferent to him whether he stood or lay,
but sit he could not. From Euston to Holyhead
he had stood, from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire,
lain. Now he stood again, bolt upright in the
centre of the room, his bowler hat on his head,
his scarlet choker tightly knotted, his glass eye
bloodshot, sliding his middle f+ingers up and
down the seams of his baggy moleskins just
above the knee, saying, "[I do be turned off,
I do be turned off,"] over and over again.
\S  7:119 Mur
\N16 "[Rather say,"] said Wylie, who unlike Murphy
preferred the poorest joke to none, provided
it was he who made it, "[you do be turned on."]
\S  7:119 Mur
\N19 He poured out a large whiskey and handed
it to him, saying:
\S  7:119 Mur
\N21 "[This will help the needle off the crack."]
\S  7:119 Mur
\N22 The large whiskey was the merest smell of
a cork to Cooper, who did not however turn
up his nose at it on that account. Most of
the corks he was offered were odourless.
\S  7:119 Mur
\N26 Cooper's account, expurgated, accelerated,
improved and reduced, of how he came to be
turned off, gives the following.
\P  7:120 Mur
\S  7:120 Mur
\N1 After many days he picked up Murphy in the
Cockpit late one afternoon and tracked him to
the mew in West Brompton. At the corner of
the mew a glorious gin-palace stood foursquare,
a pub that had no need of the sun, neither of
the moon, to shine upon it. As Cooper passed,
hard on Murphy's heels, the grille parted, the
shutters rolled up, the doors swung open.
Cooper kept on his way, Murphy's way, until
that ended in the house that Murphy entered.
He let himself in, therefore he lived there.
Cooper made a mental note of the number and
hastened back the way he had come, devising
as he went the wire to Neary.
\S  7:120 Mur
\N15 At the corner he paused to admire the pub,
superior to any he had ever seen. Suddenly
a man was standing in the porch, radiant in
his shirt-sleeves and an apron of f+ine baize,
holding fast a bottle of whiskey. His face was
as the face of an angel, he stretched out his
hand upon Cooper.
\S  7:120 Mur
\N22 When he came out f+ive hours later his thirst
was f+irmly established. The doors closed, the
shutters rattled down, the wings of the grille
came together. The defence of West Brompton,
by West Brompton, against West Brompton, was
taking no chances.
\S  7:120 Mur
\N28 He raged, Pantagruel had him by the throat.
\P  7:121 Mur
\N1 The moon, by a striking coincidence full and
at perigee, bathed the palatial tantalus in an
ironical radiance. He ground his jaws, he
clenched f+iercely the slack of his trouser knees,
he was ripe for mischief. He thought of Murphy,
his quarry, therefore his enemy. The door of
the house was ajar, he closed it behind him
and stood in the dark hall. He struck a fusee.
The one room opening off the hall was doorless,
no sound nor light came from the basement.
He climbed the stairs. He opened a door on
the mezzanine, only to behold, in the eerie
f+licker of the fusee, an earth closet. Two rooms
opened off the f+irst-f+loor landing, one was doorless,
a long gasp of despair issued from the other.
Cooper entered, found Murphy in the appalling
position described in section three, assumed
that a murder had been bungled and retreated
headlong. As he burst out of the door the most
beautiful young woman he had ever seen slipped
in.
\S  7:121 Mur
\N22 "[Alas!"] cried Miss Counihan. "[False and
cruel!"]
\S  7:121 Mur
\N24 He took tube to Wapping, whose defence of
itself, by itself, against itself, was less implacable
than West Brompton's, and there drank for a
week. His thirst and money ended together,
a merciful coincidence. He rif+led poor-box
\P  7:122 Mur
\N1 after poor-box until he had scraped together a
few shillings. He hurried back to West Brompton,
only pausing on the way to wire the good
news to Neary, that Murphy was found. The
ruins of the mew were being carted away, to
make room for an architecture more in keeping
with the palace on the corner. He hurried
back to his stew, only pausing on the way to
wire the bad news to Neary, that Murphy was lost.
\S  7:122 Mur
\N10 Neary arrived the following morning. Cooper
threw himself on his mercy, abated not one tittle
of the truth and was turned off with contumely.
\S  7:122 Mur
\N13 Some days later he was taken up for begging
without singing and given ten days. The leisure
hours of his conf+inement, which would otherwise
have hung most heavy on his hands, he devoted
to bringing up to date the return half of his
monthly ticket, so that he might lose no time,
the moment he was free, in returning to the
dear land of his birth. He had been some days
in Dublin, looking for Miss Counihan, who had
not left an address at Wynn's Hotel. Now at
last he found her, with pleased surprise in the
arms of Mr\. Wylie, whom of course he remembered
from the G\.P. days, those happy days
now gone for ever. He wiped away a tear.
\S  7:122 Mur
\N27 All the puppets in this book whinge sooner
or later, except Murphy, who is not a puppet
\P  7:123 Mur
\N1 Wylie browbeat:
\S  7:123 Mur
\N2 "[Could you f+ind Murphy again?"]
\S  7:123 Mur
\N3 "[Maybe,"] said Cooper.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N4 "[Could you f+ind Neary?"]
\S  7:123 Mur
\N5 "[Handy,"] said Cooper.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N6 "[Did you know that Neary had deserted his
wife?"]
\S  7:123 Mur
\N8 "[I did,"] said Cooper.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N9 "[Did you know she was in London?"]
\S  7:123 Mur
\N10 "[I did,"] said Cooper.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N11 "[Why didn't you go to her when Neary turned
you off?"]
\S  7:123 Mur
\N13 Cooper did not like this question at all. He
presented his prof+iles, between which there was
little resemblance, many times in rapid succession
to his tormentor.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N17 "[Why not?"] said Wylie.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N18 "[I do be too fond of Mr\. Neary,"] said Cooper.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N19 "[Liar,"] said Wylie.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N20 This was not a question. Cooper waited for
the next question.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N22 "[Neary knows too much,"] said Wylie.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N23 Cooper waited.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N24 "[You split on him,"] said Wylie, "[he splits
on you. Isn't that it?"]
\S  7:123 Mur
\N26 Cooper admitted nothing.
\S  7:123 Mur
\N27 "[All you need,"] said Wylie, "[is a little
kindness, and in a short time you will be sitting
\P  7:124 Mur
\N1 down and taking off your hat and doing all
the things that are impossible at present. Miss
Counihan and I are your friends."]
\S  7:124 Mur
\N4 Cooper could not have looked more gratif+ied
if he had been Frankenstein's da+emon and Wylie
De Lacey.
\S  7:124 Mur
\N7 "[Now, Cooper,"] said Wylie, "[will you be
so kind as to leave the room and wait outside
till I am so courteous as to call you?"]
\S  7:124 Mur
\N10 Wylie's f+irst care, when Cooper had left the
room, was to kiss Miss Counihan's tears away.
He had a special kiss for this purpose, an
astringent kiss, with a movement like a barber's
clippers. Not the thought of Murphy upside
down and bleeding, but that of the beautiful
female visitor, had upset Miss Counihan.
Mindful of Neary's blunder by the grave of
Father Prout (F\. S\. Mahony), Wylie pointed
out that there was nothing whatever to connect
Murphy with the young woman seen by Cooper
on his way out. But Miss Counihan was
offended, not mollif+ied, by this suggestion,
which seemed to her a disparagement of Murphy.
For what could beauty's business be in Murphy's
vicinity, if not with Murphy? She increased
the f+low of tears, partly to show how offended
she was, partly because the kisses she was now
getting were quite a new experience.
\P  7:125 Mur
\S  7:125 Mur
\N1 When the effort of shedding tears f+inally
became greater than the pleasure of having
them kissed away, Miss Counihan discontinued
it. Wylie restored himself with a little whiskey
and gave out the following as his considered
opinion, which indeed it was.
\S  7:125 Mur
\N7 The time had come to remove, one way or
another, once and for all, Miss Counihan's uncertainty,
which was also that of her well-wishers,
meaning himself. Neary without Cooper would
never f+ind Murphy. But even supposing he
did, would Miss Counihan be in any way
relieved? On the contrary. For if Murphy
had not already of his own free imbecility
turned down Miss Counihan in his mind, Neary
would bully or bribe him into doing so in black
and white, or, failing that, have him removed.
A man capable of bigamous designs on Miss
Counihan was capable of anything.
\S  7:125 Mur
\N20 Even Wylie did not know of the f+irst Mrs\.
Neary, alive and well, though off+icially languishing,
in Calcutta.
\S  7:125 Mur
\N23 "[Though I hold no brief for Mr\. Neary,"]
said Miss Counihan, "[yet I am loath to think he
is the dastard you describe. If, as you say, on what
grounds I do not inquire, he has deserted his wife,
no doubt he had excellent reasons for doing so."]
\S  7:125 Mur
\N28 Miss Counihan could not think too harshly
\P  7:126 Mur
\N1 of a man whom her charms had brought to the
brink of bigamy, if indeed they had. Nor
was any good purpose to be served by her concurring
in Wylie's denigrations of a suitor more
solvent, if-+-er-+-personally less interesting than
himself. She would not identify herself more
closely with Wylie than was convenient to
her purpose (Murphy) or agreeable to her
appetite. If she treated him with less rigour
than she had Neary, it was simply because the
latter took away her appetite. But she had
made it as clear to the one as she had to the
other, that so long as any hope of Murphy
remained her affections were to be regarded as
in a state of suspension. Wylie accepted this
with a very good grace. He found her suspended
affections so cordial that he did not
greatly care if they were never released.
\S  7:126 Mur
\N19 Wylie, intelligent enough to thank his stars
he was not more so, saw his mistake in defending
Murphy and attacking Neary. A man could
no more work a woman out of position on her
own ground of sentimental lech than he could
outsmell a dog. Her instinct was a menstruum,
resolving every move he made, immediately and
without effort, into its f+inal implications for her
vanity and interest. The only points at which
Miss Counihan was vulnerable were her erogenous
\P  7:127 Mur
\N1 zones and her need for Murphy. He engaged
a rapid skirmish with the former and said:
\S  7:127 Mur
\N3 "[I may be quite wrong about Neary. I
trust I am. He may be the most dependable
person in the world. But without Cooper he
will never f+ind Murphy. His talents are not
that kind. And till Murphy is found there is
nothing to be done."]
\S  7:127 Mur
\N9 Miss Counihan had a sad feeling that after
Murphy was found there might be still less to
be done. She said:
\S  7:127 Mur
\N12 "[What do you propose?"]
\S  7:127 Mur
\N13 Before Wylie proposed anything he would
like to say that Murphy's need for Miss Counihan
was certainly greater than hers for him. She
could judge of his distress from Cooper's description
of how he had found him, the victim
apparently of some brutal attack, at the hands
of a business rival in all probability, in a dwelling
not only unf+it for human habitation but condemned
by the central authority. Now he was
probably sleeping on the Embankment, or being
moved all night long round and round St\.
James's Park, or suffering the agonies of the
damned in the crypt of St\. Martin's in the
Fields. It was essential to f+ind him without
delay, not merely in order to have him satisfy
Miss Counihan that his attitude towards her
\P  7:128 Mur
\N1 was as positive as it had ever been, though that
of course remained the paramount consideration,
but also so that he might be saved from his
foolish Irish pride. So long as he was allowed
to deprive himself of Miss Counihan's society,
through some mistaken idea of chivalry, his
every effort was being crippled. But with Miss
Counihan at his side, to stimulate, encourage,
console and reward him, there was no eminence
to which he might not attain.
\S  7:128 Mur
\N11 "[I asked what you proposed,"] said Miss
Counihan.
\S  7:128 Mur
\N13 Wylie proposed that they should all go to
London, she, he and Cooper. She would be
the heart and soul, he the brains, Cooper the
claws, of the expedition. This would enable
her to let loose on Murphy, the moment he was
found, her pent-up affections, which he, Wylie,
in the meantime, would be happy and f+lattered
to exercise daily, in addition to his lesser functions
of dealing with Neary and keeping Cooper off
the bottle. And bringing hope into the life
of Adriadne ne+'e Cox, he might have added,
but did not.
\S  7:128 Mur
\N25 "[And who pays,"] said Miss Counihan, "[for
this big push?"]
\S  7:128 Mur
\N27 "[Ultimately Neary,"] said Wylie.
\S  7:128 Mur
\N28 He adduced the letter, in which Neary bemoaned
\P  7:129 Mur
\N1 his hastiness with Cooper, implored
Wylie to enter his service, and panted after
the hem of Miss Counihan's fur coat, as one
of credit through and through. It might be
necessary to call on Miss Counihan for some
of the more immediate outgoings, which she
must regard not as a mere advance, but as an
investment, with Murphy among the dividends.
\S  7:129 Mur
\N9 "[I could not leave before Saturday,"] said
Miss Counihan. She was in the middle of a
f+itting.
\S  7:129 Mur
\N12 "[Well,"] said Wylie, "[the better the day .+.+.
It is always pleasant to leave this country, but
never more so than by the Saturday B\. and I\.,
with the ladies and gentlemen of the theatre
enjoying the high-seas licence and a full night
on the water."]
\S  7:129 Mur
\N18 "[I mean there would be time,"] said Miss
Counihan, "[to advise Mr\. Neary and have
the whole arrangement placed on a less-+-er-+-|
speculative footing."]
\S  7:129 Mur
\N22 "[I am against any liaison with Neary,"] said
Wylie, "[until Murphy is found. Applied to
now, with everything still so very much up
the air, he might be foolish enough to put
obstacles in the way of his own advancement.
But confront him with his friend and beloved,
at a moment when his spirits are low, with
\P  7:130 Mur
\N1 Murphy in the background an accomplished
fact, and a shower of benef+its is I think certain."]
\S  7:130 Mur
\N4 If the worst comes to the worst, thought Wylie,
if Murphy cannot be found, if Neary turns
nasty, there is always the Cox.
\S  7:130 Mur
\N7 If the worst comes to the worst, thought
Miss Counihan, if my love cannot be found,
if Wylie turns nasty, there is always Neary.
\S  7:130 Mur
\N10 "[Very well,"] she said.
\S  7:130 Mur
\N11 Wylie assured her she would never regret
it. None of them would ever regret it. It
was the beginning of new life for them all,
her, Murphy, Neary, his unworthy self. It
was the end of darkness for all concerned. He
moved towards the door.
\S  7:130 Mur
\N17 "[Regret or not,"] said Miss Counihan, "[new
life or not, I shall never forget your kindness."]
\S  7:130 Mur
\N19 He stood with his back to the door, one hand
behind him holding the handle, the other
describing the gesture that he always used
when words were inadequate to conceal what
he felt. Miss Counihan in turn compelled
just so much understanding to sit for a moment
on her face as it could readily retrieve. It
was a risk she did not often care to take.
\S  7:130 Mur
\N27 "[It is you who are good,"] said Wylie, "[not I."]
\S  7:130 Mur
\N28 Left alone, she stirred the f+ire in vain. The
\P  7:131 Mur
\N1 turf was truly Irish in its eleutheromania, it
would not burn behind bars. She turned off
the light, opened the window and leaned out.
Is it its back that the moon can never turn
to the earth, or its face? Which was worse,
never to serve him whom she loved or perpetually
those, one after the other, whom she scarcely
disliked. These were knotty points. Wylie and
Cooper appeared on the pavement, two tiny
heads in the pillories of their shoulders (Murphy's
f+igure). Then Cooper was suddenly in motion,
jerking along in his frustrated run, expanding
into full length as he receded. She did not
heed the click of the street door slammed,
warning her to take up a position worthy of
being surprised by Wylie, but craned still
further out and down till not more than half
her person, and that half clear of the f+loor,
remained in the room. Bounding the grey
pavement, stretching away on either hand
beneath the grey spans of steps, the areas made
a fosse of darkness. The spikes of the railings
were a f+ine saw edge, spurting light. Miss
Counihan closed her eyes, which was unwise,
and seemed likely to leave the room altogether
when Wylie's hands, making two skilful handfuls
of her breasts, drew her back to a more
social vertigo.
\L  8:132 Mur
\N1 IT must have been while the chandlers were
mocking Murphy that the shocking thing happened.
\S  8:132 Mur
\N4 That day, Friday, October the 11th, after
many days, Miss Carridge found her bread, it
came bobbing back to her in the form of free
samples of various sorts, shaving soap, scent,
toilet soap, foot salts, bath cubes, dentifrice,
deodorants and even depilatories. It is so
easy to lose personal freshness. Miss Carridge
had one incalculable advantage over most of her
kind-+-insmell into her inf+irmity. She would not
stink without a struggle, provided the struggle
were not too expensive.
\S  8:132 Mur
\N15 Highly elated, thoroughly scoured and anointed
in every nook and corner, rashly glowing with the
sense of being what she called "[pristine"], Miss
Carridge appeared to Celia with the cup of tea.
Celia was standing at the window, looking out,
in an attitude quite foreign to her.
\S  8:132 Mur
\N21 "[Come in,"] said Celia.
\P  8:133 Mur
\S  8:133 Mur
\N1 "[Drink it before it curdles,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S  8:133 Mur
\N2 Celia whirled round, exclaiming:
\S  8:133 Mur
\N3 "[Oh, Miss Carridge, is that you, I am so
worried about the old boy, there has not been
a move or a stir out of him all day."] Her
agitation carried her away, she came and took
Miss Carridge by the arm.
\S  8:133 Mur
\N8 "[What nonsense,"] said Miss Carridge, "[he
took in his tray and put it out as usual."]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N10 "[That was hours ago,"] said Celia. "[There
hasn't been a stir out of him since."]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N12 "[Pardon me,"] said Miss Carridge, "[I heard
him moving about as usual quite distinctly."]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N14 "[But how could you have and not me?"] said
Celia.
\S  8:133 Mur
\N16 "[For the excellent reason,"] said Miss Carridge,
"[that you are not I."] She paused for
this striking nominative to be admired. "[Have
you forgotten the day I had to draw your attention
to the plaster he was stamping down on
your head?"]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N22 "[But now I have got to expect it,"] said Celia,
"[and listen for it, and this is the f+irst time I
haven't heard it."]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N25 "[What nonsense,"] said Miss Carridge. "[What
you want-+--+-"]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N27 "[No, no,"] said Celia, "[not till I know."]
\S  8:133 Mur
\N28 Miss Carridge shrugged without pity and
\P  8:134 Mur
\N1 turned to go, Celia clung to her arm. Miss
Carridge sweated blessings on the unguents that
made such cordiality possible, beads of gratif+ication
burst out all over her. Truly it is a tragic
quality, that which the Romans called \icaper\r,
particularly when associated with insmell.
\S  8:134 Mur
\N7 "[My poor child,"] said the virgin Miss Carridge,
"[how can I set your mind at rest?"]
\S  8:134 Mur
\N9 "[By going up and looking,"] said Celia.
\S  8:134 Mur
\N10 "[I have strict orders never to disturb him,"]
said Miss Carridge, "[but I cannot bear to see
you in such a state."]
\S  8:134 Mur
\N13 Celia was in a state indeed, trembling and
ashen. The footsteps overhead had become part
and parcel of her afternoon, with the rocking-chair
and the vermigrade wane of light. An
A+Egean nightfall suddenly in Brewery Road could
not have upset her more than this failure of the
steps.
\S  8:134 Mur
\N20 She stood at the foot of the stairs while Miss
Carridge climbed them softly, listened at the
door, knocked, knocked louder, pounded, rattled
the handle, opened with her duplicate key, took
a few steps in the room, then stood still. The old
boy lay curled up in meanders of blood on her
expensive lino, a cut-throat razor clutched in his
hand and his throat cut in effect. With a calm
that surprised her Miss Carridge surveyed the
\P  8:135 Mur
\N1 scene. It was so exactly what she would have
expected, and must therefore at some time or
other have imagined, that she felt no shock, or
very little. She heard Celia call "[What?"]
She said to herself, if I call a doctor I must pay
his fee, but if I call the police .+.+.  The razor
was closed, a f+inger was almost severed, a sudden
black f+lurry f+illed the mouth. These details,
which she could never have imagined, caused
her gorge to rise, these and others too painful to
record. She came speeding down the stairs one
step at a time, her feet going so fast that she
seemed on little caterpillar wheels, her foref+inger
sawing horribly at her craw for Celia's benef+it.
She slithered to a stop on the steps of the house
and screeched for the police. She capered about
in the street like a consternated ostrich, with
strangled distracted rushes towards the York and
Caledonian Roads in turn, embarrassingly equidistant
from tragedy, tossing up her arms,
undoing the good work of the samples, screeching
for police aid. Her mind was so collected that
she saw clearly the impropriety of letting it
appear so. When neighbours and passers-by had
assembled in suff+icient numbers, she scuttled back
to hold her door against them.
\S  8:135 Mur
\N27 The police arrived and sent for a doctor. The
doctor arrived and sent for an ambulance. The
\P  8:136 Mur
\N1 ambulance arrived and the old boy was carried
down the stairs, past Celia stuck on the landing,
and put into it. This proved that he still lived,
for it is a misdemeanour to put a corpse, no
matter how fresh, into an ambulance. But to
take one out contravenes no law, by-law, section
or sub-section, and it was perfectly in order for
the old boy to consummate, as he did, his felony
on the way to the hospital.
\S  8:136 Mur
\N10 Miss Carridge was not a penny out of pocket,
not one penny. The police, not she, had called
the doctor, therefore his fee was on them. The
bloody dilapidation of her lovely lino was amply
covered by the month's advance rent paid by
the old boy the day before. She had carried
off the whole affair in splendid style.
\S  8:136 Mur
\N17 Murphy spent most of that night and the next
day and the next night expounding by way of
comfort to Celia, on and off, angrily, the unutterable
benef+its that would accrue, were already
accruing, to the old boy from his demise. This
was quite beside the point, for Celia was mourning,
like all honest survivors, quite frankly for
herself. Yet it was not until the small hours of
the Sunday morning that he realised the irrelevance
of what he was doing, and furthermore its
spuriousness. So far from being adapted to
Celia, it was not addressed to her.
\P  8:137 Mur
\S  8:137 Mur
\N1 It is hard to say why she was, and remained,
so profoundly distressed. The damage done to
her afternoons, which she had grown to treasure
almost as much as Murphy his before she picked
him up, seems inadequate to account for it. She
kept on wanting but not daring to go up and
look at the room where it happened. She would
go as far as the foot of the stairs and then come
back. Her whole behaviour annoyed Murphy,
of whose presence she seemed conscious only in
f+its and starts, and then with a kind of impersonal
rapture that he did not relish in the least.
\S  8:137 Mur
\N13 Finally his intimation, proudly casual, that a
job was his or as good as his at last, excited her
to the extent of an "[Oh"]. Nothing more.
Not even an "[Oh indeed"]. He took her angrily
by the shoulders and forced her to look at him.
The clear green of her eyes, rolling now and
everted like an aborting goat's, was silted with
yellow.
\S  8:137 Mur
\N21 "[Look at me,"] he said.
\S  8:137 Mur
\N22 She looked through him. Or back off him.
\S  8:137 Mur
\N23 "[Ever since June,"] he said, "[it has been job,
job, job, nothing but job. Nothing happens in the
world but is specially designed to exalt me into a
job. I say a job is the end of us both, or at least
of me. You say no, but the beginning. I am
to be a new man, you are to be a new woman,
\P  8:138 Mur
\N1 the entire sublunary excrement will turn to civet,
there will be more joy in heaven over Murphy
f+inding a job than over the billions of leather-bums
that never had anything else. I need you,
you only want me, you have the whip, you win."]
\S  8:138 Mur
\N6 He stopped, left in the lurch by his emotion.
The anger that gave him the energy to begin was
gone before he had half ended. A few words
used it up. So it had always been, not only with
anger, not only with words.
\S  8:138 Mur
\N11 Celia did not look a winner, sagging under his
hands, breathing painfully through her mouth,
her eyes soiled and wild.
\S  8:138 Mur
\N14 "[Avoid exhaustion,"] she murmured, in weary
ellipsis of Suk.
\S  8:138 Mur
\N16 "[I drag round this warren,"] said Murphy,
with the last dregs of resentment, "[day after day,
hail, rain, sleet, snow, sog, I mean fog, soot, and
I suppose f+ine, my breeches falling off with a
fourpenny vomitory, looking for \iyour\r job. At
last I f+ind it, it f+inds me, I am half dead with
abuse and exposure, I am in a marasmus, I do
not delay a moment but come crawling back to
receive your congratulations. You say \`Oh\'.
It is better than \`Yah\'."]
\S  8:138 Mur
\N26 "[You don't understand,"] said Celia, who was
not trying to follow.
\S  8:138 Mur
\N28 "[No,"] said Murphy. "[A decayed valet severs
\P  8:139 Mur
\N1 the connexion and you set up a niobaloo as though
he were your fourteen children. No. I am at a
loss."]
\S  8:139 Mur
\N4 "[Not valet,"] said Celia. "[Butler. Ex-butler."]
\S  8:139 Mur
\N6 "[XX butler,"] said Murphy. "[Porter."]
\S  8:139 Mur
\N7 The little scene was over, if scene it could be
called. There was a long silence, Celia forgiving
Murphy for having spoken roughly to her,
Miss Counihan, Wylie and Cooper breaking their
fast on the Liverpool-London express. Murphy
got up and began to dress with care.
\S  8:139 Mur
\N13 "[Why did the barmaid champagne?"] he said.
"[Do you give it up?"]
\S  8:139 Mur
\N15 "[Yes,"] said Celia.
\S  8:139 Mur
\N16 "[Because the stout porter bitter,"] said Murphy.
\S  8:139 Mur
\N17 This was a joke that did not amuse Celia, at
the best of times and places it could not have
amused her. That did not matter. So far from
being adapted to her, it was not addressed to her.
It amused Murphy, that was all that mattered.
He always found it most funny, more than most
funny, clonic, it and one other concerning a
bottle of stout and a card party. These were the
Gilmigrim jokes, so called from the Lilliputian
wine. He staggered about on the f+loor in his
bare feet, one time amateur theological student's
shirt, dicky and lemon bow, overcome by the
\P  8:140 Mur
\N1 toxins of this simple little joke. He sank down
on the dream of Descartes linoleum, choking and
writhing like a chicken with the gapes, seeing
the scene. On the one hand the barmaid, fresh
from the country, a horse's head on a cow's
body, her crape bodice more a W than a V, her
legs more an X than an O, her eyes closed for
the sweet pain, leaning out through the hatch of
the bar parlour. On the other the stout porter,
mounting the footrail, his canines gleaming
behind a pad of frothy whisker. Then the nip,
and Tintoretto's \iOrigin\r \iof\r \ithe\r \iMilky\r \iWay\r.
\S  8:140 Mur
\N13 The f+it was so much more like one of epilepsy
than of laughter that Celia felt alarm. Watching
him roll on the f+loor in his only decent shirt and
dicky, she made the needful changes, recalled the
scene in the mew and went to his assistance, as
she had then. It was unnecessary, the f+it was
over, gloom took its place, as after a heavy
night.
\S  8:140 Mur
\N21 He suffered her to dress him. When she had
done he sat down in his chair and said:
\S  8:140 Mur
\N23 "[God knows now when I'll be back."]
\S  8:140 Mur
\N24 Immediately she wanted to know all about it.
It was in order to torment at his ease this tardy
concern that he had sat down. He still loved
her enough to enjoy cutting the tripes out of her
occasionally. When he felt appeased, as he soon
\P  8:141 Mur
\N1 did, he stopped rocking, held up his hand and
said:
\S  8:141 Mur
\N3 "[The job is your fault. If it doesn't come off
I'll be back this evening. If it does come off I
don't know when I'll be back. That was what I
meant when I said God knew. If they let me
start straight away so much the worse."]
\S  8:141 Mur
\N8 "[They?"] said Celia. "[Who? Start what?"]
\S  8:141 Mur
\N9 "[You'll know this evening,"] said Murphy.
"[Or if not this evening, to-morrow evening. Or
if not to-morrow evening, the day after to-morrow
evening. And so on."] He stood up. "[Give
the coat a bit of a dinge behind in the waist,"]
he said. "[The draught is terrible."]
\S  8:141 Mur
\N15 She made a long dent in the waist of the coat.
In vain, it f+illed out again immediately, as a
punctured ball will not retain an impression.
\S  8:141 Mur
\N18 "[It won't stay,"] she said.
\S  8:141 Mur
\N19 Murphy sighed.
\S  8:141 Mur
\N20 "[It is the second childhood,"] he said. "[Hard
on the heels of the pantaloons."]
\S  8:141 Mur
\N22 He kissed her, in Lydian mode, and went to
the door.
\S  8:141 Mur
\N24 "[I believe you're leaving me,"] said Celia.
\S  8:141 Mur
\N25 "[Perhaps for just a little while you compel me
to,"] said Murphy.
\S  8:141 Mur
\N27 "[For good and all."]
\S  8:141 Mur
\N28 "[Oh no,"] he said, "[only for just a little while
\P  8:142 Mur
\N1 at the maximum. If for good and all I would
take the chair."] He felt in his pocket to make
sure he had Suk. He had. He went.
\S  8:142 Mur
\N4 She was too undressed to see him off at the door,
she had to be content with standing on a chair
and putting her head out of the window. She
was beginning to wonder why he did not appear
when he came back into the room.
\S  8:142 Mur
\N9 "[Wasn't there to be an execution this morning?"]
he said.
\S  8:142 Mur
\N11 "[Never on Sunday,"] said Celia.
\S  8:142 Mur
\N12 He struck his head despairingly, shook it and
went again. He knew perfectly well the day was
Sunday, it was essential that it should be, and
yet he kept on thinking it was Friday, day of
execution, love and fast.
\S  8:142 Mur
\N17 From the window she saw him stand irresolute
at the gate, his head sunk in the pillory of his
shoulders, holding the coat in against his waist
before and behind, as though turned to stone in
the middle of a hornpipe. After a time he
moved off in the direction of York Road, but
stopped after a few steps and stood against the
railings, gripping the neck of a spike at his head,
in the attitude of one leaning on a staff.
\S  8:142 Mur
\N26 When all the other circumstances of this departure
had become blunted in her mind she continued
to see, at the most unexpected times,
\P  8:143 Mur
\N1 whether she would or no, the hand clutching the
spike of railing, the f+ingers loosening and tightening,
higher than the dark head.
\S  8:143 Mur
\N4 He retraced his steps slowly, hissing. Celia
thought he was coming back for something he
had forgotten, but no. As he passed the door,
going towards Pentonville, she called down good-bye.
He did not hear her, he was hissing.
\S  8:143 Mur
\N9 His f+igure so excited the derision of a group
of boys playing football in the road that they
stopped their game. She watched him multiplied
in their burlesque long after her own eyes could
see him no more.
\S  8:143 Mur
\N15 He did not return that night, nor the next,
nor the next. On Monday Miss Carridge asked
where he was. "[Away on business,"] said Celia.
On Tuesday Miss Carridge asked when she
expected him back. "[From day to day,"] said
Celia. On Wednesday Miss Carridge received
a new lot of samples and brought up the tea.
"[Will you sit down?"] said Celia. "[Most
happy,"] said Miss Carridge. Well she might
be.
\S  8:143 Mur
\N25 "[Are you in trouble?"] said Miss Carridge,
whose charity stopped at nothing short of alms.
"[Of course, you know your own business best,
but I hear you moving about in the afternoon
\P  8:144 Mur
\N1 just like the old boy, God Almighty rest his
immortal soul, before he was taken from us."]
\S  8:144 Mur
\N3 This striking use of the passive voice did not
spring from any fatalistic notions in the mind of
Miss Carridge, but from her conviction, which as
the landlady she felt it her duty to hold and utter
as often as possible, that the old boy had cut his
throat by accident.
\S  8:144 Mur
\N9 "[Oh no,"] said Celia, "[no special trouble."]
\S  8:144 Mur
\N10 "[Ah well, we all have our troubles,"] said Miss
Carridge, sighing, wishing her own were a little
less penetrating.
\S  8:144 Mur
\N13 "[Tell me about the old boy,"] said Celia.
\S  8:144 Mur
\N14 The story that Miss Carridge had to tell was
very pathetic and tedious. It brightened up a
little with her reconstruction of the death scene,
cupidity lending wings to her imagination.
\S  8:144 Mur
\N18 "[He gets out his razor to shave, as he always
did regular about noon."] A lie. The old boy
shaved once a week and then the last thing at
night. "[That I do know, because I found the
brush on the dresser with a squeeze of paste on
top."] A lie. "[He goes to put up the tube
before he lathers, he walks across the room with
the razor in his hand, screwing the cap on the
tube. He drops the cap, he throws the tube on
the bed and goes down on the f+loor. I found
the tube on the bed and the cap under the bed."]
\P  8:145 Mur
\N1 Lies. "[He goes crawling about the f+loor, with
the razor open in his hand, when all of a sudden
he has a seizure."] Pronounced on the analogy
of manure. "[He told me when he f+irst came he
might have a seizure any minute, he had two this
year already, one on Shrove Tuesday, the other
on Derby Day. That I do know."] All lies.
"[He falls on his face with the razor under him,
zzzeeeppp!"] she reinforced the onomatopo+eia
with dumb-show, "[what more do you want?"]
\S  8:145 Mur
\N11 It was not for this that Celia had put Miss
Carridge on to the old boy. She looked pleasant
and waited.
\S  8:145 Mur
\N14 "[What I say is this,"] said Miss Carridge, "[and
it's what I said to the c'roner. A man doesn't
pay a month's advance rent one day and do away
with himself the next. It isn't natural."] She
really convinced herself with this argument.
"[Now if he was in arrears I wouldn't be so sure."]
\S  8:145 Mur
\N20 Celia agreed that to owe Miss Carridge rent
would be a dreadful situation.
\S  8:145 Mur
\N22 "[What did they say at the inquest?"] said
Celia.
\S  8:145 Mur
\N24 "[\iFelo-de-se\r,"] said Miss Carridge, with scorn
and anger, "[and got the room a bad name all
over Islington. God knows now when I'll get it
off. \iFelo-de-se\r! Felo-de my rump."] Just like
Mr\. Kelly.
\P  8:146 Mur
\S  8:146 Mur
\N1 Here at last was the opening that Celia had
been waiting for. The fact that Miss Carridge
had made it, and not she, gave an almost
charitable air to what she had to propose.
\S  8:146 Mur
\N5 She and Murphy would go upstairs and leave
their room, to which no sinister associations
attached, free for letting.
\S  8:146 Mur
\N8 "[My dear child!"] ejaculated Miss Carridge,
and waited for the catch.
\S  8:146 Mur
\N10 They would be willing to pay for the room
alone what the old boy had paid for the room
and his keep, which worked out monthly at ten
shillings less than what they paid at present, as
Miss Carridge in a moment of gush had had the
folly to reveal. The room was on the small side
for two, but Mr\. Murphy expected to be away
more than formerly and they would be glad of
the saving.
\S  8:146 Mur
\N19 "[Hah!"] said Miss Carridge. "[Saving?
Then am I to take it you expect me to send the
same bill to Mr\. Quigley and hand you over the
ten bob?"]
\S  8:146 Mur
\N23 "[Less the usual commission,"] said Celia.
\S  8:146 Mur
\N24 "[This is most insulting,"] said Miss Carridge,
racking her brains for a means of making it
less so.
\S  8:146 Mur
\N27 "[How?"] said Celia. "[Mr\. Quigley will be
no worse off. You are the victim of circumstances.
\P  8:147 Mur
\N1 You must live. We oblige you, you
oblige us."]
\S  8:147 Mur
\N3 Celia's professional powers of persuasion had
been dulled by her association with Murphy.
What revived them now was not any desire to
succeed with Miss Carridge where he had failed,
but an immense longing to get into the old boy's
room.
\S  8:147 Mur
\N9 "[That may be,"] said Miss Carridge, "[but it
is the principle of the thing, the principle of the
thing."] Her face took on an expression of intense
concentration, almost of anguish. To accommodate
the principle of such a transaction to
her sense of what was honourable would take a
little time, a little prayer and possibly even
meditation.
\S  8:147 Mur
\N17 "[I must go and ask for guidance,"] she said.
\S  8:147 Mur
\N18 After a decent interval for a thorough self-scrutiny,
during which Celia packed, Miss Carridge
came back, her face serene. There remained
just one small matter to regulate before
the process of mutual assistance could begin,
namely, the precise meaning of "[usual commission"].
\S  8:147 Mur
\N25 "[Ten per cent,"] said Celia.
\S  8:147 Mur
\N26 "[Twelve and a half,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S  8:147 Mur
\N27 "[Very well,"] said Celia. "[I cannot haggle."]
\S  8:147 Mur
\N28 "[Nor I,"] said Miss Carridge.
\P  8:148 Mur
\S  8:148 Mur
\N1 "[If you can manage the two bags,"] said
Celia, "[I can manage the chair."]
\S  8:148 Mur
\N3 "[Is that all you've got?"] said Miss Carridge
contemptuously. She was annoyed at Celia's
having taken the divine indulgence for granted.
\S  8:148 Mur
\N6 "[All,"] said Celia.
\S  8:148 Mur
\N7 The old boy's room was half as big as theirs,
half as high, twice as bright. The walls and
linoleum were the same. The bed was tiny.
Miss Carridge could not imagine how the two of
them were ever going to manage. When not
f+ired by cupidity, Miss Carridge's imagination
was of the feeblest.
\S  8:148 Mur
\N14 "[I know I shouldn't like to sleep two in it,"]
she said.
\S  8:148 Mur
\N16 Celia opened the window.
\S  8:148 Mur
\N17 "[I expect Mr\. Murphy to be away a great
deal,"] she said.
\S  8:148 Mur
\N19 "[Ah well,"] said Miss Carridge, "[we all have
our troubles."]
\S  8:148 Mur
\N21 Celia unpacked her bag, but not Murphy's.
It was late afternoon. She got out of her clothes
and into the rocking-chair. Now the silence
above was a different silence, no longer strangled.
The silence not of vacuum but of plenum, not
of breath taken but of quiet air. The sky. She
closed her eyes and was in her mind with Murphy,
Mr\. Kelly, clients, her parents, others, herself a
\P  8:149 Mur
\N1 girl, a child, an infant. In the cell of her mind,
teasing the oakum of her history. Then it was
f+inished, the days and places and things and
people were untwisted and scattered, she was
lying down, she had no history.
\S  8:149 Mur
\N6 It was a most pleasant sensation. Murphy did
not come back to curtail it.
\S  8:149 Mur
\N8 Penelope's curriculum was reversed, the next
day and the next it was all to do over again, the
coils of her life to be hackled into tow all over
again, before she could lie down in the paradisial
innocence of days and places and things and
people. Murphy did not come back to expel her.
\S  8:149 Mur
\N14 The next day was Saturday (if our reckoning
is correct) and Miss Carridge announced that the
char was coming to do out the big room and might
as well do out the old boy's room as well. They
both continued to think and speak of the top
room as the old boy's room. While the char
was doing it out Celia could wait below in the
big room. "[Or downstairs with me if you
prefer,"] said Miss Carridge, with pitiable diff+idence.
\S  8:149 Mur
\N24 "[That is very good of you,"] said Celia.
\S  8:149 Mur
\N25 "[Most happy,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S  8:149 Mur
\N26 "[But I think I ought to get out,"] said Celia.
She had not been outside the door for more than
a fortnight.
\P  8:150 Mur
\S  8:150 Mur
\N1 "[Please yourself,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S  8:150 Mur
\N2 On the steps of the house Celia departing met
the char arriving. Celia set off towards Pentonville,
with the swagger that could not be disguised.
The char stared after her at length, gave her nose
a long wipe and through it said, though there
was none to hear:
\S  8:150 Mur
\N8 "[Lovely work, if you can get it."]
\S  8:150 Mur
\N9 Her course was clear: the Round Pond. The
temptation to revisit West Brompton was strong,
to tread her old beat in the daylight, to stand
again at the junction of Cremorne Road and
Stadium Street, to see the barges of waste paper
on the river and the funnels vailing to the bridges,
but she set it aside. There would be time for
that. There was a good breeze from the west,
she would go and watch Mr\. Kelly sailing his
kite.
\S  8:150 Mur
\N19 She took the Piccadilly tube from Caledonian
Road to Hyde Park Corner and walked along
the grass north of the Serpentine. Each leaf as
it fell had an access of new life, a sudden frenzy
of freedom at contact with the earth, before it
lay down with the others. She had meant to
cross the water by Rennie's Bridge and enter
Kensington Gardens by one of the wickets in the
eastern boundary, but remembering the dahlias
at Victoria Gate she changed her mind and bore
\P  8:151 Mur
\N1 off to the right into the north, round the accident
house of the Royal Humane Society.
\S  8:151 Mur
\N3 Cooper was standing under a tree in the Cockpit,
as he had done, with spells of lying, all day
and every day since his return to London with
Wylie and Miss Counihan. He recognised Celia
as she swaggered past. He let her get well ahead
and then started after her, his gait more frustrated
than ever as he forced himself to keep his distance.
He could not help gaining on her, he had to
stop every now and then to let her get on. She
stood a long time before the dahlias, then entered
the gardens by the fountains. She took the path
straight across to the Round Pond, walked round
it clockwise and sat down on a bench on the west
side with her back to the palace and the wind,
close to the f+lyers, but not too close. She wanted
to see Mr\. Kelly, but not to be seen by him.
Not yet.
\S  8:151 Mur
\N20 The f+lyers were some old men, most of whom
she recognised from the days when she had come
regularly with Mr\. Kelly every Saturday afternoon,
and one child. Mr\. Kelly was late.
\S  8:151 Mur
\N24 It began to rain, she moved into the shelter.
A young man followed her, pleasantly spoken,
amorously disposed. She could not blame him,
it was a natural mistake, she felt sorry for him,
she disabused him gently.
\P  8:152 Mur
\S  8:152 Mur
\N1 The water splashed over the margin of the
pond, the nearer kites were writhing and plunging.
The nearer they were, the more contorted
and wild. One came down in the pond.
Another, after prolonged paroxysms, behind the
cast of the Physical Energy of G\.F\. Watts, O\.M\.,
R\.A\. Only two rode steadily, a tandem, coupled
abreast like the happy tug and barge, f+lown by
the child from a double winch. She could just
discern them, side by side high above the trees,
specks against the east darkening already. The
wrack broke behind them as she watched, for a
moment they stood out motionless and black, in
a glade of limpid viridescent sky.
\S  8:152 Mur
\N15 She grew more and more impatient for Mr\.
Kelly to come and show his skill as the chances
of his doing so diminished. She sat on till it was
nearly dark and all the f+lyers, except the child,
had gone. At last he also began to wind in and
Celia watched for the kites to appear. When
they did their contortions surprised her, she
could hardly believe it was the same pair that
had ridden so serenely on a full line. The child
was expert, he played them with a f+inesse worthy
of Mr\. Kelly himself. In the end they came
quietly, hung low in the murk almost directly
overhead, then settled gently. The child knelt
down in the rain, dismantled them, wrapped the
\P  8:153 Mur
\N1 tails and sticks in the sails and went away,
singing. As he passed the shelter Celia called
good night. He did not hear her, he was singing.
\S  8:153 Mur
\N4 Soon the gates would close, all over the
gardens the rangers were crying their cry: \iAll\r
\iout\r. Celia started slowly up the Broad Walk,
wondering what could have happened to Mr\.
Kelly, impervious in the ordinary way to every
form of weather except the dead calm. It was
not as though he depended on her to wheel him,
he always insisted on propelling the chair himself.
He enjoyed the sensation of plying the levers, he
said it was like working the pulls of a beer-engine.
It looked as though something were amiss with
Mr\. Kelly.
\S  8:153 Mur
\N16 She took the District Railway from Notting
Hill Gate to King's Cross. So did Cooper. She
toiled up Caledonian Road, feeling the worse for
her outing. She was tired and wet, Mr\. Kelly
had failed, the child had ignored her good night.
There was nothing to go back to, yet she was
glad when she arrived. So was Cooper. She
let herself in, therefore she lived there. This
time he did not exceed his instructions, but
hastened away as soon as he had made a mental
note of the number. Cooper's mental notes were
few, but ineffaceable. Celia had begun to climb
the stairs in the dark when Miss Carridge came
\P  8:154 Mur
\N1 out of her room and switched on the light.
Celia stopped, her feet on different steps, her
hand on the banister, her face in prof+ile.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N4 "[Mr\. Murphy came while you were out,"] said
Miss Carridge. "[You can't have been gone f+ive
minutes."]
\S  8:154 Mur
\N7 For a full second Celia mistook this to mean
that Murphy had come back.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N9 "[He took his bag and the chair,"] said Miss
Carridge, "[but couldn't wait."]
\S  8:154 Mur
\N11 There was the usual silence, Miss Carridge
missing nothing of Celia's expression, Celia
appearing to scrutinise her hand on the banister.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N14 "[Any message,"] said Celia, at last.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N15 "[I can't hear you,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N16 "[Did Mr\. Murphy leave any message?"] said
Celia, turning away and taking another step
upward.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N19 "[Wait now till I see,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N20 Celia waited.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N21 "[Yes,"] said Miss Carridge, "[now that you
ask me, he did say to tell you he was all right
and would be writing."] A lie. Miss Carridge's
pity knew no bounds but alms.
\S  8:154 Mur
\N25 When it was quite clear that this was the whole
extent of the message Celia went on slowly up
the stairs. Miss Carridge stood with a f+inger on
the switch, watching. The turn of the stair took
\P  8:155 Mur
\N1 the body out of sight, but Miss Carridge could
still see the hand on the banister, gripping, then
sliding a little, gripping again, then sliding a
little more. When the hand also disappeared
Miss Carridge switched off the light and stood
in the dark that was so much less extravagant,
not to mention richer in acoustic properties,
listening.
\S  8:155 Mur
\N9 She heard with surprise the door of the big
room opened and closed again immediately.
After a pause the steps resumed their climb, no
more slowly than before, but perhaps a little less
surely. She waited till she heard the old boy's
door close, neither loudly nor softly, and then
went back to her book: \iThe\r \iCandle\r \iof\r \iVision\r,
by George Russell (A\.E\.).
\L  9:156 Mur
\N1 \iIl\r \iest\r \idiff+icile\r \ia+`\r \icelui\r \iqui\r \ivit\r \ihors\r \idu\r \imonde\r \ide\r \ine\r \ipas\r \irechercher\r
\iles\r \isiens\r. (MALRAUX)
\S  9:156 Mur
\N3 THE Magdalen Mental Mercyseat lay a little way
out of town, ideally situated in its own grounds
on the boundary of two counties. In order to
die in the one sheriffalty rather than in the other
some patients had merely to move up, or be
moved up, a little in the bed. This sometimes
proved a great convenience.
\S  9:155 Mur
\N10 The head male nurse, Mr\. Thomas ("[Bim"])
Clinch, a huge red, bald, whiskered man of overweening
ability and authority in his own department,
had a fancy for Ticklepenny not far short
of love. It was largely thanks to this that
Ticklepenny had been taken on in the f+irst place.
It was largely thanks to it now that Murphy was
taken on in Ticklepenny's stead. For Ticklepenny
had vowed to Bim that if Murphy were
not taken on in his stead, to release him from
the torments of the wards, he would go, pay or
no pay. But if Murphy were taken on he would
\P  9:157 Mur
\N1 stay, he would return to the bottles and the slops
and so remain available for Bim's fancy, which
was not far short of love.
\S  9:157 Mur
\N4 After a sharp struggle between man and head
male nurse Bim neatly reconciled his pleasure and
his duty. He would take Murphy on a month's
probation and release Ticklepenny from his
contract. When Murphy had completed his
month, and not before, Ticklepenny would be
paid for the ten days he had served. Thus
Ticklepenny was made security for Murphy
and the fancy given a full month in which to
cloy.
\S  9:157 Mur
\N14 Ticklepenny proposed that he should be paid
his ten days as soon as Murphy had completed,
not his own month, but as much of Ticklepenny's
as had still to run.
\S  9:157 Mur
\N18 "[Darling,"] said Bim, "[you will get your one-six-eight
as soon as your Murphy has given a
month's satisfaction and no sooner."]
\S  9:157 Mur
\N21 "[Then make it one-ten,"] said Ticklepenny.
"[Have a heart."]
\S  9:157 Mur
\N23 "[That is entirely up to you,"] said Bim.
\S  9:157 Mur
\N24 Thus Murphy's appointment, as though to a
position of the highest trust, was a foregone
conclusion. His own merits were so recondite,
in spite of the magical eye, that he obviously
could not be appointed on them, but only on
\P  9:158 Mur
\N1 the demerits, or by-merits, of Ticklepenny. So
it was that a few minutes after his arrival he
found himself being signed on and admonished
by Bim, who did not like the look of him in the
least.
\S  9:158 Mur
\N6 He would be expected to make beds, carry
trays, clean up regular messes, clean up casual
messes, read thermometers, write charts, wash
the bedridden, give medicine, hound down its
effects, warm bedpans, cool fevers, boil gags,
sterilize when in doubt, honour and obey the
male sister, wait hand, foot and mouth on the
doctor when he came, look pleasant.
\S  9:158 Mur
\N14 He would never lose sight of the fact that he
was dealing with patients not responsible for
what they did or said.
\S  9:158 Mur
\N17 He would never on any account allow himself
to be affected by the abuse, no matter how foul
and unmerited, that would be poured out upon
him. The patients seeing so much of the nurses
and so little of the doctor, it was natural that they
should regard the former as their persecutors
and the latter as their saviour.
\S  9:158 Mur
\N24 He would never on any account be rough
with a patient. Restraint and coercion were
sometimes unavoidable, but must always be
exerted with the utmost tenderness. After all
it was a mercyseat. If singlehanded he could
\P  9:159 Mur
\N1 not handle a patient without hurting him, let
him call the other nurses to his assistance.
\S  9:159 Mur
\N3 He would never lose sight of the fact that he
was a creature without initiative. He had no
competence to register facts on his own account.
There were no facts in the M\.M\.M\. except those
sanctioned by the doctor. Thus, to take a simple
example, when a patient died suddenly and
f+lagrantly, as was sometimes bound to happen
even in the M\.M\.M\., let him assume nothing of
the kind when sending for the doctor. No
patient was dead till the doctor had seen him.
\S  9:159 Mur
\N13 He would never on any account neglect to
keep his mouth shut. The mercies of the Mercyseat
were private and conf+idential.
\S  9:159 Mur
\N16 These were the main points to be kept constantly
in mind. Other routine details would be
explained to him as he went along.
\S  9:159 Mur
\N19 He was assigned to Skinner's House, male side,
f+irst f+loor. His hours would be 8 to 12 and 2 to 8.
He would start the following morning. He
would be on day duty the f+irst week, on night
duty the second week. The peculiar features of
night duty would be explained to him when the
time came.
\S  9:159 Mur
\N26 A less remarkable outf+it would be issued to him.
\S  9:159 Mur
\N27 Had he any questions before he was passed on
to Ticklepenny?
\P  9:160 Mur
\S  9:160 Mur
\N1 There was a silence, Bim liking the look of
Murphy less and less, Murphy racking his brains
for a plausible curiosity.
\S  9:160 Mur
\N4 "[In that case-+--+-"] said Bim.
\S  9:160 Mur
\N5 "[Are they all certif+ied?"] said Murphy.
\S  9:160 Mur
\N6 "[That is not your business,"] said Bim. "[You
are not paid to take an interest in the patients,
but to fetch for them, carry for them and clean
up after them. All you know about them is the
work they give you to do. Make no mistake
about it."]
\S  9:160 Mur
\N12 Murphy learned later that about 15 per cent of
the patients were certif+ied, a little band select
only in name, treated with exactly the same
sanguine punctilio as the 85 per cent that were
not certif+ied. For the M\.M\.M\. was a sanatorium,
not a madhouse nor a home for defectives, and
as such admitted only those cases whose prognoses
were not hopeless. If the effect of treatment
was to render the prognosis hopeless, as was
sometimes bound to happen even in the M\.M\.M\.,
then out went the patient, except in very special
extenuating circumstances. Thus if the chronic
(the soft impairment having been admitted) was
a really charming chap, quiet, clean, biddable
and solvent, he might be allowed to settle down
in the M\.M\.M\. for the rest of his natural.
There were a few such fortunate cases, certif+ied
\P  9:161 Mur
\N1 and uncertif+ied, enjoying all the amenities of a
mental hospital, from peraldehyde to slosh,
without any of its therapeutic vexations.
\S  9:161 Mur
\N4 Cringing with relief, Ticklepenny took Murphy
f+irst to his sleeping quarters, then to Skinner
House.
\S  9:161 Mur
\N7 Two large buildings, one for males, the other
for females, remote from the main block and still
more so from each other, housed the nursing
staff and other menials. Married nurses, both
male and female, lived out. No female nurse
had taken a male nurse to husband within living
memory, though one had once been almost
obliged to.
\S  9:161 Mur
\N15 Murphy had the choice of sharing a room with
Ticklepenny or having a garret to himself. They
climbed the ladder to the latter and Murphy
chose it with such decision that even Ticklepenny
felt a little slighted. It was not usual
for Ticklepenny to feel slighted at all, it was
unprecedented for him to do so without cause,
as was the present case. For had he been Cleopatra
herself, in the last years of her father's
reign, Murphy would have made the same
choice.
\S  9:161 Mur
\N26 The reason for this eccentricity does not seem
a very good one. Fewer years ago than he cared
to remember, while still in the f+irst cyanosis of
\P  9:162 Mur
\N1 youth, Murphy had occupied a garret in Hanover,
not for long, but for long enough to experience
all its advantages. Since then he had sought
high and low for another, even half as good.
In vain. What passed for a garret in Great
Britain and Ireland was really nothing more
than an attic. An attic! How was it possible
for such a confusion to arise? A basement was
better than an attic. An attic!
\S  9:162 Mur
\N10 But the garret that he now saw was not an
attic, nor yet a mansarde, but a genuine garret,
not half, but twice as good as the one in Hanover,
because half as large. The ceiling and the outer
wall were one, a superb surge of white, pitched
at the perfect angle of furthest trajectory, pierced
by a small frosted skylight, ideal for closing
against the sun by day and opening by night to
the stars. The bed, so low and gone in the
springs that even unfreighted the middle grazed
the ground, was wedged lengthways into the cleft
of f+loor and ceiling, so that Murphy was saved the
trouble of moving it into that position. The
garret contained, in addition to the bed, one
chair and one chest, not of drawers. An immense
candle, stuck to the f+loor by its own tallow,
pointed its snuff to heaven at the head of the bed.
This, the only means of light, was more than
enough for Murphy, a strict non-reader. But he
\P  9:163 Mur
\N1 objected very strongly to there being no means
of heat.
\S  9:163 Mur
\N3 "[I must have f+ire,"] he said to Ticklepenny,
"[I cannot live without f+ire."]
\S  9:163 Mur
\N5 Ticklepenny was sorry, he thought it most
unlikely that Murphy would be granted a f+ire
in the garret. There were no tubes or wires to
that remote aery. A brazier seemed the only
chance, but Bim would hardly allow a brazier.
Murphy would f+ind that a f+ire was really unnecessary
in so conf+ined a space. The f+lame within
would work up a f+ine fug in no time.
\S  9:163 Mur
\N13 "[I come here to oblige you,"] said Murphy,
"[and I am still prepared to do so, but not without
f+ire."]
\S  9:163 Mur
\N16 He went on to speak of tubes and wires. Was
it not just the beauty of tubes and wires, that
they could be extended? Was it not their chief
characteristic, the ease with which they could be
extended? What was the point of going in for
tubes and wires at all, if you did not extend
them without compunction whenever necessary?
Did they not cry out for extension? Ticklepenny
thought he would never stop, saying feverishly
the same thing in slightly different ways.
\S  9:163 Mur
\N26 "[You should see my f+ire,"] said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:163 Mur
\N27 This infuriated Murphy. Was he to f+ind a
garret after all these years, just as all hope
\P  9:164 Mur
\N1 seemed dead, a garret that was actually not an
attic, nor a mansarde, only to lose it again at
once for want of a few yards of tube or wire?
He broke into sweat, lost all his yellow, his heart
pounded, the garret spun round, he could not
speak. When he could he said, in a voice new
to Ticklepenny:
\S  9:164 Mur
\N8 "[Have f+ire in this garret before night or-+--+-"]
\S  9:164 Mur
\N9 He stopped because he could not go on. It
was an aposiopesis of the purest kind. Ticklepenny
supplied the missing consequences in
various versions, each one more painful than any
that Murphy could have specif+ied, terrifying
taken all together. Suk's indication of silence
as one of Murphy's highest attributes could not
have been more strikingly justif+ied.
\S  9:164 Mur
\N17 It seems strange that neither of them thought
of an oil-stove, say a small Valor Perfection.
Bim could hardly have objected and all the
trouble with tubes and wires would have been
avoided. The fact remains that the idea of an
oil-stove did not occur to either of them at the
time, though it did long afterwards to Ticklepenny.
\S  9:164 Mur
\N25 "[Now for the wards,"] said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:164 Mur
\N26 "[Did you catch what I said,"] said Murphy,
"[by any chance?"]
\S  9:164 Mur
\N28 "[I'll do what I can,"] said Ticklepenny.
\P  9:165 Mur
\S  9:165 Mur
\N1 "[It makes no difference to me,"] said Murphy,
"[whether I go or stay."]
\S  9:165 Mur
\N3 He was mistaken.
\S  9:165 Mur
\N4 On the way to Skinner's House they passed a
bijou edif+ice of mellow brick with a forecourt of
lawn and f+lowers, its facade a profusion of
traveller's joy and self-clinging ampelopsis, set
in a bay of clipped yews.
\S  9:165 Mur
\N9 "[Is that the nursery?"] said Murphy.
\S  9:165 Mur
\N10 "[No,"] said Ticklepenny, "[the mortuary."]
\S  9:165 Mur
\N11 Skinner's was a long, grey, two-storied building,
dilated at both ends like a double obelisk.
The females were thrown all together to the west,
the males to the east, and on the strength of this
it was called a mixed house, as distinct from the
two convalescent houses, which very properly
were not mixed. Similarly, some public baths
are called mixed where the bathing is not.
\S  9:165 Mur
\N19 Skinner's was the cockpit of the M\.M\.M\. and
here the battle raged most f+iercely, whenever it
could be engaged, between the psychotic and
psychiatric points of view. Patients left Skinner's
better, dead or chronic, for a convalescent house,
the mortuary or the exit, as the case might be.
\S  9:165 Mur
\N25 They mounted directly to the f+irst f+loor and
Murphy was submitted to the male sister, Mr\.
Timothy ("[Bom"]) Clinch, younger twin and
dead spit of Bim. Bom, primed by Bim,
\P  9:166 Mur
\N1 expected nothing from Murphy, and Murphy,
\iex\r \ihypothesi\r, nothing from Bom, with the result
that neither was disappointed.
\S  9:166 Mur
\N4 Bim Clinch had no fewer than seven male
relations, linear and collateral, serving under
him, of whom the greatest was Bom and perhaps
the least an aged uncle ("[Bum"]) in the bandage-winding
department, as well as an elder sister,
two nieces and a by-blow on the female side.
There was nothing old-fashioned or half-hearted
about the nepotism of Bim Clinch, there was no
more resolute and successful pope to his family
in the south of England, and even in the south
of Ireland there were still some who might have
studied his methods with prof+it.
\S  9:166 Mur
\N16 "[This way,"] said Bom.
\S  9:166 Mur
\N17 The wards consisted of two long corridors,
intersecting to form a T, or more correctly a
decapitated potence, the three extremities developed
into spacious crutch-heads, which were
the reading-, writing- and recreation-rooms or
"[wrecks"], known to the wittier ministers of
mercy as the sublimatoria. Here the patients were
encouraged to play billiards, darts, ping-pong, the
piano and other less strenuous games, or simply
to hang about doing nothing. The great majority
preferred simply to hang about doing nothing.
\S  9:166 Mur
\N28 To adopt for a moment as a purely descriptive
\P  9:167 Mur
\N1 convenience the terms and orientation of church
architecture, the layout of the wards was that of
nave and transepts, with nothing east of the
crossing. There were no open wards in the
ordinary sense, but single rooms, or as some
would say, cells, or as Boswell said, mansions,
opening south off the nave and east and west
off the transepts. North of the nave were the
kitchens, patients' refectory, nurses' refectory,
drug arsenal, patients' lavatory, nurses' lavatory,
visitors' lavatory, etc\. The bedridden and more
refractory cases were kept together as far as
possible in the south transept, off which opened
the padded cells, known to the wittier as the
"[quiet rooms"], "[rubber rooms"] or, in a notable
clip, "[pads"]. The whole place was overheated
and stank of peraldehyde and truant sphincters.
\S  9:167 Mur
\N18 There were not many patients about as Murphy
followed Bom through the wards. Some were
at matins, some in the gardens, some could not
get up, some would not, some simply had not.
But those that he did see were not at all the
terrifying monsters that might have been
imagined from Ticklepenny's account. Melancholics,
motionless and brooding, holding their
heads or bellies according to type. Paranoids,
feverishly covering sheets of paper with complaints
against their treatment or verbatim
\P  9:168 Mur
\N1 reports of their inner voices. A hebephrenic
playing the piano intently. A hypomanic teaching
slosh to a Korsakow's syndrome. An
emaciated schizoid, petrif+ied in a toppling
attitude as though condemned to an eternal
\itableau\r \ivivant\r, his left hand rhetorically extended
holding a cigarette half smoked and out, his right,
quivering and rigid, pointing upward.
\S  9:168 Mur
\N9 They caused Murphy no horror. The most
easily identif+iable of his immediate feelings were
respect and unworthiness. Except for the manic,
who was like an epitome of all the self-made
plutolaters who ever triumphed over empty
pockets and clean hands, the impression he
received was of that self-immersed indifference to
the contingencies of the contingent world which
he had chosen for himself as the only felicity
and achieved so seldom.
\S  9:168 Mur
\N19 The tour being over and all Bim's precepts
exemplif+ied, Bom led the way back to the
crossing and said:
\S  9:168 Mur
\N22 "[That is all now. Report in the morning at
eight."]
\S  9:168 Mur
\N24 He waited to be thanked before he opened the
door. Ticklepenny nudged Murphy.
\S  9:168 Mur
\N26 "[A million thanks,"] said Murphy.
\S  9:168 Mur
\N27 "[Don't thank me,"] said Bom. "[Any questions?"]
\P  9:169 Mur
\S  9:169 Mur
\N1 Murphy knew better, but made a show of
consulting with himself.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N3 "[He would like to start in straight away,"]
said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N5 "[That is a matter for Mr\. Tom,"] said Mr\.
Tim.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N7 "[Oh, it's all O\.K\. with Mr\. Tom,"] said
Ticklepenny.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N9 "[My instructions are he doesn't come on till
the morning,"] said Bom.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N11 Ticklepenny nudged Murphy, this time unnecessarily.
For Murphy was only too anxious
to test his striking impression that here was the
race of people he had long since despaired of
f+inding. Also he wanted Ticklepenny to be free
to rig up his f+ire. He would have played up
unprompted.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N18 "[Of course I know my month only counts
from to-morrow,"] he said, "[but Mr\. Clinch very
kindly had no objection to my starting in
straight away if I wanted to."]
\S  9:169 Mur
\N22 "[And do you?"] said Bom, very incredulous,
having seen the nudge (the second nudge).
\S  9:169 Mur
\N24 "[What he wants-+--+-"] said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:169 Mur
\N25 "[You,"] said Bom with a sudden ferocity that
put Murphy's heart across him, "[you shut your
bloody choke, we all know what you want."] He
mentioned one or two of the things that Ticklepenny
\P  9:170 Mur
\N1 most wanted. Ticklepenny wiped his
face. Two sorts of reprimand were familiar to
Ticklepenny, those that left him in the necessity
of wiping his face and those that did not. He
used no other principle of differentiation.
\S  9:170 Mur
\N6 "[Yes,"] said Murphy, "[I should like very much
to start in at once, if I might."]
\S  9:170 Mur
\N8 Bom gave up. When the fool supports the
knave the good man may fold his hands. The
fool in league with the knave against himself is
a combination that none may withstand. Oh,
monster of humanity and enlightenment, despairing
of a world in which the only natural allies
are the fools and knaves, a mankind sterile with
self-complicity, admire Bom feeling dimly for
once what you feel acutely so often, Pilate's hands
rustling in his mind.
\S  9:170 Mur
\N18 Thus Bom released Ticklepenny and delivered
Murphy to his folly.
\S  9:170 Mur
\N20 Feeling just the same old Wood's halfpenny
in the regulation shirt and suit, perhaps because
he refused to leave off the lemon bow, Murphy
reported to Bom at two o'clock and entered upon
that experience from which already he hoped
for better things, without exactly knowing why
or what things or in what way better.
\S  9:170 Mur
\N27 He was sorry when eight o'clock came and he
was sent off duty, having been loudly abused by
\P  9:171 Mur
\N1 Bom for his clumsiness in handling things (trays,
beds, thermometers, syringes, pans, jacks, spatulas,
screws, etc\.) and silently commended for his
skill in handling the patients themselves, whose
names and more f+lagrant peculiarities he had fully
co-ordinated by the end of the six hours, what
he might expect from them and what never hope.
\S  9:171 Mur
\N8 Ticklepenny was lying all over the garret f+loor,
struggling with a tiny old-fashioned gas radiator,
f+iring a spark-pistol with a kind of despair, in the
light of the candle. He related how the crazy
installation had developed, step by step, typically,
from the furthest-fetched of visions to a reality
that would not function.
\S  9:171 Mur
\N15 It had taken him an hour to perfect the vision.
It had taken him another hour to unearth the
radiator, the key-piece of the whole contraption,
with spark-pistol ironically attached.
\S  9:171 Mur
\N19 "[I should have thought,"] said Murphy, "[that
the radiator was secondary to the gas."]
\S  9:171 Mur
\N21 He had brought the radiator to the garret, set
it down on the f+loor and stood back to imagine
it lit. Rusty, dusty, derelict, the coils of asbestos
falling to pieces, it seemed to defy ignition. He
went dismally away to look for gas.
\S  9:171 Mur
\N26 It had taken him another hour to f+ind what
might be made to serve, a disused jet in the w\.c\.,
now lit by electricity, on the f+loor below.
\P  9:172 Mur
\S  9:172 Mur
\N1 The extremes having thus been established,
nothing remained but to make them meet. This
was a diff+iculty whose fascinations were familiar
to him from the days when as a pot poet he had
laboured so long and so lovingly to join the ends
of his pentameters. He solved it in less than two
hours by means of a series of discarded feed tubes
eked out with ca+esura+e of glass, thanks to which
gas was now being poured into the radiator.
Yet the asbestos would not kindle, pepper it with
sparks as he might.
\S  9:172 Mur
\N12 "[You speak of gas,"] said Murphy, "[but I
smell no gas."]
\S  9:172 Mur
\N14 This was where he was at a disadvantage, for
Ticklepenny did smell gas, faintly but distinctly.
He described how he had turned it on in the
w\.c\. and raced it back to the garret. He
explained how the f+low could only be regulated
from the w\.c\., as there was no tap and no provision
for a tap at the radiator's seat of entry.
That was perhaps the chief inconvenience of his
machine. A more dignif+ied way for Murphy to
light his f+ire, in default of an assistant to turn
on the gas below while he waited above ready
with the spark-pistol, would be to f+ix an asbestos
nozzle on his end of the connexion, descend
with this to the source of supply, light up in the
w\.c\. and carry the f+ire back to the radiator at
\P  9:173 Mur
\N1 his leisure. Or if he preferred he could bring
the whole radiator down to the w\.c\. and to hell
with a special nozzle. But those were minor
points. The main point was that he, Ticklepenny,
had turned on the gas more than ten
minutes before and been f+iring sparks into the
radiator ever since, without result. This was
true.
\S  9:173 Mur
\N9 "[Either the gas is not on,"] said Murphy, "[or
the connexion is broken."]
\S  9:173 Mur
\N11 "[Amn't I after trying?"] said Ticklepenny.
A lie. Ticklepenny was worn out.
\S  9:173 Mur
\N13 "[Try again,"] said Murphy. "[Show me the
sparks."]
\S  9:173 Mur
\N15 Ticklepenny crawled down the ladder.
Murphy crouched before the radiator. In a
moment came a faint hiss, then a faint smell.
Murphy averted his head and pulled the trigger.
The radiator lit with a sigh and blushed, with
as much of its asbestos as had not perished.
\S  9:173 Mur
\N21 "[How's that?"] called Ticklepenny from the
foot of the ladder.
\S  9:173 Mur
\N23 Murphy went down, to prevent Ticklepenny,
whose immediate usefulness seemed over, from
coming up and to be shown the tap.
\S  9:173 Mur
\N26 "[Is she going?"] said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:173 Mur
\N27 "[Yes,"] said Murphy. "[Where's the tap?"]
\S  9:173 Mur
\N28 "[Well, that beats all,"] said Ticklepenny.
\P  9:174 Mur
\S  9:174 Mur
\N1 What beat all was how the tap, which he really
had turned on, came to be turned off.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N3 The dismantled jet projected high up in the
wall of the w\.c\. and what Ticklepenny called the
tap was one of those double chain and ring
arrangements designed for the convenience of
dwarfs.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N8 "[As I hope to be saved,"] said Ticklepenny,
"[I swear I turned the little b\-\- on."]
\S  9:174 Mur
\N10 "[Perhaps a little bird f+lew in,"] said Murphy,
"[and lit on it."]
\S  9:174 Mur
\N12 "[How could he with the window shut?"] said
Ticklepenny.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N14 "[Perhaps he shut it behind him,"] said
Murphy.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N16 They returned to the foot of the ladder.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N17 "[A million thanks,"] said Murphy.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N18 "[Well, that beats everything,"] said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N20 Murphy tried to pull the ladder up after him.
It was fastened down.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N22 "[Come on down to the club for a bit,"] said
Ticklepenny, "[why don't you?"]
\S  9:174 Mur
\N24 Murphy closed the trap.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N25 "[Well, that beats the band,"] said Ticklepenny,
shambling away.
\S  9:174 Mur
\N27 Murphy moved the radiator as close to the
bed as it would reach, sagged willingly in the
\P  9:175 Mur
\N1 middle according to the mattress and tried to
come out in his mind. His body being too active
with its fatigue to permit of this, he submitted
to sleep, Sleep son of Erebus and Night, Sleep
half-brother to the Furies.
\S  9:175 Mur
\N6 When he awoke the fug was thick. He got
up and opened the skylight to see what stars
he commanded, but closed it again at once,
there being no stars. He lit the tall thick
candle from the radiator and went down to
the w\.c\. to shut off the f+low. What was the
etymology of gas? On his way back he examined
the foot of the ladder. It was only
lightly screwed down, Ticklepenny could rectify
it. He undressed to the regulation shirt, stuck
the candle by its own tallow to the f+loor at
the head of the bed, got in and tried to come
out in his mind. But his body was still too
busy with its fatigue. And the etymology of
gas? Could it be the same word as chaos?
Hardly. Chaos was yawn. But then cretin
was Christian. Chaos would do, it might not
be right but it was pleasant, for him henceforward
gas would be chaos, and chaos gas.
It could make you yawn, warm, laugh, cry,
cease to suffer, live a little longer, die a little
sooner. What could it not do? Gas. Could
it turn a neurotic into a psychotic? No. Only
\P  9:176 Mur
\N1 God could do that. Let there be Heaven in
the midst of the waters, let it divide the waters
from the waters. The Chaos and Waters
Facilities Act. The Chaos, Light and Coke
Co\. Hell. Heaven. Helen. Celia.
\S  9:176 Mur
\N6 In the morning nothing remained of the dream
but a postmonition of calamity, nothing of the
candle but a little coil of tallow.
\S  9:176 Mur
\N10 Nothing remained but to see what he wanted
to see. Any fool can turn the blind eye, but
who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?
\S  9:176 Mur
\N13 He would not have admitted that he needed
a brotherhood. He did. In the presence of
this issue (psychiatric-psychotic) between the
life from which he had turned away and the
life of which he had no experience, except as
he hoped inchoately in himself, he could not
fail to side with the latter. His f+irst impressions
(always the best), hope of better things, feeling
of kindred, etc\., had been in that sense. Nothing
remained but to substantiate these, distorting
all that threatened to belie them. It was
strenuous work, but very pleasant.
\S  9:176 Mur
\N25 Thus it was necessary that every hour in the
wards should increase, together with his esteem
for the patients, his loathing of the text-book
attitude towards them, the complacent scientif+ic
\P  9:177 Mur
\N1 conceptualism that made contact with outer
reality the index of mental well-being. Every
hour did.
\S  9:177 Mur
\N4 The nature of outer reality remained obscure.
The men, women and children of science would
seem to have as many ways of kneeling to
their facts as any other body of illuminati. The
def+inition of outer reality, or of reality short
and simple, varied according to the sensibility
of the def+iner. But all seemed agreed that
contact with it, even the layman's muzzy
contact, was a rare privilege.
\S  9:177 Mur
\N13 On this basis the patients were described
as "[cut off"] from reality, from the rudimentary
blessings of the layman's reality, if not altogether,
as in the severer cases, then in certain fundamental
respects. The function of treatment was
to bridge the gulf, translate the sufferer from
his own pernicious little private dungheap to
the glorious world of discrete particles, where
it would be his inestimable prerogative once
again to wonder, love, hate, desire, rejoice
and howl in a reasonable balanced manner,
and comfort himself with the society of others
in the same predicament.
\S  9:177 Mur
\N26 All this was duly revolting to Murphy, whose
experience as a physical and rational being
obliged him to call sanctuary what the psychiatrists
\P  9:178 Mur
\N1 called exile and to think of the patients
not as banished from a system of benef+its but
as escaped from a colossal f+iasco. If his mind
had been on the correct cash-register lines,
an indefatigable apparatus for doing sums with
the petty cash of current facts, then no doubt
the suppression of these would have seemed
a deprivation. But since it was not, since
what he called his mind functioned not as an
instrument but as a place, from whose unique
delights precisely those current facts withheld
him, was it not most natural that he should
welcome their suppression, as of gyves?
\S  9:178 Mur
\N14 The issue therefore, as lovingly simplif+ied and
perverted by Murphy, lay between nothing less
fundamental than the big world and the little
world, decided by the patients in favour of
the latter, revived by the psychiatrists on behalf
of the former, in his own case unresolved. In
fact, it was unresolved, only in fact. His vote
was cast. "[I am not of the big world, I am
of the little world"] was an old refrain with
Murphy, and a conviction, two convictions,
the negative f+irst. How should he tolerate,
let alone cultivate, the occasions of f+iasco, having
once beheld the beatif+ic idols of his cave?
In the beautiful Belgo-Latin of Arnold Geulincx:
\iUbi\r \inihil\r \ivales\r, \iibi\r \inihil\r \ivelis\r.
\P  9:179 Mur
\S  9:179 Mur
\N1 But it was not enough to want nothing where
he was worth nothing, nor even to take the
further step of renouncing all that lay outside
the intellectual love in which alone he could
love himself, because there alone he was lovable.
It had not been enough and showed no signs
of being enough. These dispositions and others
ancillary, pressing every available means (e\.g\.
the rocking-chair) into their service, could sway
the issue in the desired direction, but not clinch
it. It continued to divide him, as witness his deplorable
susceptibility to Celia, ginger, and so on.
The means of clinching it were lacking. Suppose
he were to clinch it now, in the service of the
Clinch clan! That would indeed be very pretty.
\S  9:179 Mur
\N16 The frequent expressions apparently of pain,
rage, despair and in fact all the usual, to which
some patients gave vent, suggesting a f+ly somewhere
in the ointment of Microcosmos, Murphy
either disregarded or muted to mean what he
wanted. Because these outbursts presented more
or less the same features as those current in
Mayfair and Clapham, it did not follow that
they were identically provoked, any more than
it was possible to argue the livers of those areas
from the gloomy panoply of melancholia. But
even if the Eton and Waterloo causes could be
established behind these simulacra of their
\P  9:180 Mur
\N1 effects, even if the patients did sometimes feel
as lousy as they sometimes looked, still no
aspersion was necessarily cast on the little world
where Murphy presupposed them, one and all,
to be having a glorious time. One had merely
to ascribe their agitations, not to any f+law
in their self-seclusion, but to its investment by
the healers. The melancholic's melancholy, the
manic's f+its of fury, the paranoid's despair, were
no doubt as little autonomous as the long fat
face of a mute. Left in peace they would have
been as happy as Larry, short for Lazarus,
whose raising seemed to Murphy perhaps the one
occasion on which the Messiah had overstepped
the mark.
\S  9:180 Mur
\N16 With these and even less weighty constructions
he saved his facts against the pressure of those
current in the Mercyseat. Stimulated by all
those lives immured in mind, as he insisted on
supposing, he laboured more diligently than
ever before at his own little dungeon in Spain.
Three factors especially encouraged him in
this and in the belief that he had found his
kindred at last. The f+irst was the absolute
impassiveness of the higher schizoids, in the
face of the most pitiless therapeutic bombardment.
The second was the padded cells. The
third was his success with the patients.
\P  9:181 Mur
\S  9:181 Mur
\N1 The f+irst of these, after what has been said
of Murphy's own bondage, speaks for itself.
What more vigorous f+illip could be given to
the wallows of one bogged in the big world
than the example of life to all appearances
inalienably realised in the little?
\S  9:181 Mur
\N7 The pads surpassed by far all he had even
been able to imagine in the way of indoor
bowers of bliss. The three dimensions, slightly
concave, were so exquisitely proportioned that
the absence of the fourth was scarcely felt.
The tender luminous oyster-grey of the pneumatic
upholstery, cushioning every square inch
of ceiling, walls, f+loor and door, lent colour
to the truth, that one was a prisoner of air.
The temperature was such that only total nudity
could do it justice. No system of ventilation
appeared to dispel the illusion of respirable
vacuum. The compartment was windowless,
like a monad, except for the shuttered judas
in the door, at which a sane eye appeared,
or was employed to appear, at frequent and
regular intervals throughout the twenty-four
hours. Within the narrow limits of domestic
architecture he had never been able to imagine
a more creditable representation of what he
kept on calling, indefatigably, the little world.
\S  9:181 Mur
\N28 His success with the patients was little short
\P  9:182 Mur
\N1 of scandalous. According to the text-book psychotic,
with his tendency to equate those objects,
ideas, persons, etc\., evincing the least element
in common, the patients should have identif+ied
Murphy with Bom & Co\., simply because he
resembled them in the superf+icial matters of
function and clothing. The great majority
failed to do so. The great majority discriminated
so unmistakably in Murphy's favour that even
Bom lost a little of his high colour. Whatever
they were in the habit of doing for Bom & Co\.,
they did more readily for Murphy. And in
certain matters where Bom & Co\. were obliged
to coerce them, or restrain them, they would
suffer Murphy to persuade them. One patient,
a litigious case of doubtful category, refused
to exercise unless accompanied by Murphy.
Another, a melancholic with highly developed
delusions of guilt, would not get out of his bed
unless on Murphy's invitation. Another melancholic,
convinced that his intestines had turned
to twine and blotting-paper, would only eat
when Murphy held the spoon. Otherwise he
had to be force-fed. All this was highly irregular,
little short of scandalous.
\S  9:182 Mur
\N26 Murphy was revolted by Suk's attribution
of this strange talent solely to the moon in the
Serpent at the hour of his birth. The more
\P  9:183 Mur
\N1 his own system closed round him, the less he
could tolerate its being subordinated to any
other. Between him and his stars no doubt
there was correspondence, but not in Suk's
sense. They were \ihis\r stars, he was the prior
system. He had been projected, larval and
dark, on the sky of that regrettable hour as on
a screen, magnif+ied and clarif+ied into his own
meaning. But it was \ihis\r meaning. The moon
in the Serpent was no more than an image,
a fragment of vitagraph.
\S  9:183 Mur
\N12 Thus the sixpence worth of sky changed again,
from the poem that he alone of all the living could
write to the poem that he alone of all the born
could have written. So far as the prophetic
status of the celestial bodies was concerned
Murphy had become an out-and-out preterist.
\S  9:183 Mur
\N18 Free therefore to inspect for the f+irst time
\iin\r \isitu\r that "[great magical ability of the eye
to which the lunatic would easy succumb"],
Murphy was gratif+ied to f+ind how well it consisted
with what he knew already of his idiosyncrasy.
His success with the patients was
the signpost at last on the way he had followed
so long and so blindly, with nothing to sustain
him but the conviction that all other ways were
wrong. His success with the patients was a
signpost pointing to them. It meant that they
\P  9:184 Mur
\N1 felt in him what they had been and he in them
what he would be. It meant that nothing less
than a slap-up psychosis could consummate
his life's strike. \iQuod\r \ierat\r \iextorquendum\r.
\S  9:184 Mur
\N5 It seemed to Murphy that of all his friends
among the patients there was none quite like
his "[tab"], Mr\. Endon his "[tab"]. It seemed
to Murphy that he was bound to Mr\. Endon,
not by the tab only, but by a love of the purest
possible kind, exempt from the big world's
precocious ejaculations of thought, word and
deed. They remained to one another, even
when most profoundly one in spirit, as it seemed
to Murphy, Mr\. Murphy and Mr\. Endon.
\S  9:184 Mur
\N15 A "[tab"] was a patient "[on parchment"]
(or "[on caution"]). A patient was put on
parchment (or on caution) whenever there was
occasion to suspect him of serious suicidal
leanings. The occasion might be threats uttered
by the patient or it might be simply the general
tenor of his behaviour. Then a tab was issued
in his name, specifying in all cases where a
preference had been expressed the form of
suicide contemplated. Thus: "[Mr\. Higgins.
The bellycut, or any other available means."]
"[Mr\. O'Connor. Venom, or any other available
means."] "[Any other available means"] was
a saving clause. The tab was then passed on
\P  9:185 Mur
\N1 to the male sister, who having endorsed it
passed it on to one of his male nurses, who
having endorsed it was from that time forward
responsible for the natural death of the bastard
in question. Of the special duties entailed by
this responsibility, perhaps the chief was the
control of the suspect at regular intervals of
not more than twenty minutes. For it was the
experience of the Mercyseat that only the most
skilful and determined could do the trick in
less time than that.
\S  9:185 Mur
\N12 Mr\. Endon was on parchment and Murphy
had his tab: "[Mr\. Endon. Apno+ea, or any
other available means."]
\S  9:185 Mur
\N15 Suicide by apno+ea has often been tried, notably
by the condemned to death. In vain. It is
a physiological impossibility. But the Mercyseat
was not disposed to take unnecessary
chances. Mr\. Endon had insisted that if he
did it at all, it would be by apno+ea, and not
otherwise. He said his voice would not hear
of any other method. But Dr\. Killiecrankie,
the Outer Hebridean R\.M\.S\., had some experience
of the schizoid voice. It was not like
a real voice, one minute it said one thing and
the next minute something quite different.
Nor was he entirely satisf+ied as to the physiological
impossibility of suicide by apno+ea. Dr\.
\P  9:186 Mur
\N1 Killiecrankie had been to often had by the
resources of organic matter ever again to draw
the Canutian line.
\S  9:186 Mur
\N4 Mr\. Endon was a schizophrenic of the most
amiable variety, at least for the purposes of
such a humble and envious outsider as Murphy.
The languor in which he passed his days, while
deepening every now and then to the extent
of some charming suspension of gesture, was
never so profound as to inhibit all movement.
His inner voice did not harangue him, it was
unobtrusive and melodious, a gentle continuo
in the whole consort of his hallucinations. The
bizarrerie of his attitudes never exceeded a
stress laid on their grace. In short, a psychosis
so limpid and imperturbable that Murphy felt
drawn to it as Narcissus to his fountain.
\S  9:186 Mur
\N18 The tiny body was perfect in every detail
and extremely hairy. The features were most
delicate, regular and winning, the complexion
olive except where blue with beard. The skull,
large for any body, immense for this, crackled
with stiff black hair broken at the crown by one
wide tress of bright white. Mr\. Endon did
not dress, but drifted about the wards in a
f+ine dressing-gown of scarlet byssus faced with
black braid, black silk pyjamas and neo-merovingian
poulaines of deepest purple. His f+ingers
\P  9:187 Mur
\N1 blazed with rings. He held tight in his little
f+ist the butt, varying in length according to the
hour, of an excellent cigar. This Murphy
would light for him in the morning and keep
on lighting throughout the day. Yet evening
found it still unf+inished.
\S  9:187 Mur
\N7 It was the same with chess, Mr\. Endon's one
frivolity. Murphy would set up the game, as
soon as he came on in the morning, in a quiet
corner of the wreck, make his move (for he
always played white), go away, come back to
Mr\. Endon's reply, make his second move, go
away, and so on throughout the day. They
came together at the board but seldom. One
or two minutes was as long as Mr\. Endon cared
to pause in his drifting, longer than Murphy
dared snatch from his duties and the vigilance
of Bom. Each made his move in the absence
of the other, inspected the position with what
time remained, and went away. So the game
wore on, till evening found it almost as level
as when begun. This was due not so much to
their being evenly matched, or to the unfavourable
conditions of play, as to the very
Fabian methods that both adopted. How little
the issue was really engaged may be judged
from the fact that sometimes, after eight or
nine hours of this guerrilla, neither player
\P  9:188 Mur
\N1 would have lost a piece or even checked the
other. This pleased Murphy as an expression
of his kinship with Mr\. Endon and made him
if possible more chary of launching an attack
than by nature he was.
\S  9:188 Mur
\N6 He was sorry for himself, very sorry, when
eight o'clock came and he had to leave the wards,
Mr\. Endon and the lesser friends and exemplars,
the warmth and smell of peraldehyde, etc\., to
face the twelve hours of self, unredeemed split
self, now more than ever the best he could do
and less than ever good enough. The end
degrades the way into a means, a sceneless tedium.
Yet he had to welcome the inkling of the end.
\S  9:188 Mur
\N15 The garret, the fug, sleep, these were the poor
best he could do. Ticklepenny had unscrewed
the ladder, so that now he could draw it up
after him. Do not come down the ladder,
they have taken it away.
\S  9:188 Mur
\N20 He did not see the stars any more. Walking
back from Skinner's his eyes were on the ground.
And when it was not too cold to open the skylight
in the garret, the stars seemed always
veiled by cloud or fog or mist. The sad truth
was that the skylight commanded only that
most dismal patch of night sky, the galactic
coal-sack, which would naturally look like a
dirty night to any observer in Murphy's condition,
\P  9:189 Mur
\N1 cold, tired, angry, impatient and out of
conceit with a system that seemed the superf+luous
cartoon of his own.
\S  9:189 Mur
\N4 Nor did he think of Celia any more, though
he could sometimes remember having dreamt
of her. If only he had been able to think of
her, he would not have needed to dream of her.
\S  9:189 Mur
\N8 Nor did he succeed in coming alive in his
mind any more. He blamed this on his body,
fussy with its fatigue after so much duty, but
it was rather due to the vicarious autology
that he had been enjoying since morning, in
little Mr\. Endon and all the other proxies.
That was why he felt happy in the wards and
sorry when the time came to leave them. He
could not have it both ways, not even the
illusion of it.
\S  9:189 Mur
\N18 He thought of the rocking-chair left behind
in Brewery Road, that aid to life in his mind
from which he had never before been parted.
His books, his pictures, his postcards, his musical
scores and instruments, all had been gradually
disposed of in that order rather than the chair.
He worried about it more and more as the week
of day duty drew to an end and the week of
night duty approached.
\S  9:189 Mur
\N27 The garret, the fug, fatigue, night, the hours
of vicarious autology, these had made it possible
\P  9:190 Mur
\N1 for him to do without the chair. But night
duty would be different. Then there would
be no appeasement by proxy, for Mr\. Endon
and his kind would be sleeping. Then there
would be no fatigue, for watching could not
fatigue him. But he would f+ind himself in the
morning, with all the hours of light before him,
hungry in mind, docile in body, craving for
the chair.
\S  9:190 Mur
\N10 Saturday was his afternoon off and he hastened
to Brewery Road. In a way, the one way,
the immemorial way, he was sorry to f+ind Celia
out. In all other ways, glad. For whether
he answered her questions or not, told the truth
or lied, she would know that he was gone. He
did not want her to feel, at least he did not
did not want to be present when she felt, how far all
her loving nagging had gone astray; how it
had only served to set him up more f+irmly than
before in the position against which it had been
trained, the position in which she had found
him and would not leave him; how her efforts
to make a man of him had made him more
than ever Murphy; and how by insisting on
trying to change him she had lost him, as he
had warned her she would. "[You, my body,
my mind .+.+. one must go."]
\S  9:190 Mur
\N28 It was night when he reached the garret with
\P  9:191 Mur
\N1 the chair, having satisf+ied himself on the way
up that no one was about, least of all in the
w\.c\. Almost at once gas, reminding him that
he had forgotten to turn it on, began to pour
through the radiator. This could not alarm
him, who was not tied by interest to a corpse-obedient
matter and whose best friends had
always been among things. He merely felt
greatly obliged, that he had not to let down
the ladder and go and repair his omission.
\S  9:191 Mur
\N11 He lit the radiator, undressed, got into the
chair but did not tie himself up. Gently does
these things, sit down before you lie down.
When he came to, or rather from, how he had
no idea, the f+irst thing he saw was the fug,
the next sweat on his thigh, the next Ticklepenny
as though thrown on the silent screen
by Griff+ith in midshot soft-focus sprawling on the
bed, suggesting how he might have been roused.
\S  9:191 Mur
\N20 "[I lit the candle,"] said Ticklepenny, "[the
better to marvel at you."]
\S  9:191 Mur
\N22 Murphy did not move, any more than one
does for an animal, or an animal for one. The
instinctive curiosities also, as to how long
Ticklepenny had been there, what he wanted
at that dead hour, how he had contrived to
intrude with the ladder removed, etc\., were
too indolent to discharge in words.
\P  9:192 Mur
\S  9:192 Mur
\N1 "[I could not sleep,"] said Ticklepenny."[You
are the only pal I have in this kip. I called
and called. I threw my handball against the
trap, again and again, with all my might.
I got the wind up. I ran and got my little
steps."]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N7 "[I suppose if I had a lock put on the trap,"]
said Murphy, "[my pals would come in through
the skylight."]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N10 "[You fascinate me,"] said Ticklepenny, "[fast
asleep in the dark with your eyes wide open,
like an owl is it not?"]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N13 "[I was not asleep,"] said Murphy.
\S  9:192 Mur
\N14 "[Oh,"] said Ticklepenny, "[then you did
hear me."]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N16 Murphy looked at Ticklepenny.
\S  9:192 Mur
\N17 "[Oh,"] said Ticklepenny, "[just deep in thought
then or plunged in a reverie maybe."]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N19 "[What do you take me for?"] said Murphy.
"[The student of my year?"]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N21 "[Then what?"] said Ticklepenny. "[If it
is not a rude question."]
\S  9:192 Mur
\N23 Murphy amused himself bitterly and brief+ly
with the question of the answer he would have
made to a person of his own steak and kidney,
genuinely anxious to understand and desirable
of being understood by, a Mr\. Endon at his
own degree of incipience for example. But
\P  9:193 Mur
\N1 before the imperfect phrase had time to come
the question crumbled away in its own absurdity,
the absurdity of saddling such a person with
the rationalist prurit, the sceptic rut that places
the objects of its curiosity on the level of Les
Girls. It was not under that the rare birds of
Murphy's feather desired to stand, but by, by
themselves with the best of their attention and
by the others of their species with any that might
be left over. It was not in order to obtain
an obscene view of the surface that in days
gone by the Great Auk dived under the ice,
the Great Auk now no longer seen above it.
\S  9:193 Mur
\N14 "[I do not know exactly what you want,"]
said Murphy, "[but I can tell you there is
nothing I can do for you that would not be
done better by anyone else. So why stay?"]
\S  9:193 Mur
\N18 "[Do you know what it is?"] said Ticklepenny,
"[no offence meant, you had a great look of
Clarke there a minute ago."]
\S  9:193 Mur
\N21 Clarke had been for three weeks in a katatonic
stupor.
\S  9:193 Mur
\N23 "[All but the cackle,"] said Ticklepenny.
\S  9:193 Mur
\N24 Clarke would repeat for hours the phrase:
"[Mr\. Endon is \ivery\r superior."]
\S  9:193 Mur
\N26 The gratif+ied look that Murphy disdained to
hide so alarmed Ticklepenny that he abandoned
his purpose and rose to go, just as Murphy
\P  9:194 Mur
\N1 would not have objected to his staying a little
longer. He lowered himself over the threshold,
he stood on his steps with only his head appearing.
He said:
\S  9:194 Mur
\N5 "[You want to watch yourself."]
\S  9:194 Mur
\N6 "[In what way?"] said Murphy.
\S  9:194 Mur
\N7 "[You want to mind your health,"] said
Ticklepenny.
\S  9:194 Mur
\N9 "[In what way did I remind you of Clarke?"]
said Murphy.
\S  9:194 Mur
\N11 "[You want to take a pull on yourself,"] said
Ticklepenny. "[Good night."]
\S  9:194 Mur
\N13 And in effect Murphy's night was good,
perhaps the best since nights began so long
ago to be bad, the reason being not so much that
he had his chair again as that the self whom
he loved had the aspect, even to Ticklepenny's
inexpert eye, of a real alienation. Or to put
it perhaps more nicely: conferred that aspect
on the self whom he hated.
\L10:195  Mur
\N1 MISS COUNIHAN and Wylie were not living
together!
\S10:195  Mur
\N3 The decaying Haydn, invited to give his
opinion of cohabitation, replied: "[Parallel
thirds."] But the partition of Miss Counihan
and Wylie had more concrete grounds.
\S10:195  Mur
\N7 To begin with Miss Counihan, to begin with
she was eager to get into the correct grass Dido
cramp in plenty of time. She did not want to
leave it to the last moment, until they were
actually haling Murphy before her, and then
have to scour London for a pyre that was clean,
comfortable, central and not exorbitant. So
she found without delay, and imparted in
block capitals to Wylie, an address in Gower
Street where she was on no account to be disturbed.
It was almost opposite the off+ices of
the \iSpectator\r, but she did not discover this until
it was too late. Here she cowered, as happy
as the night was short, in the midst of Indians,
Egyptians, Cyprians, Japanese, Chinese, Siamese
\P10:196  Mur
\N1 and clergymen. Little by little she sucked up
to a Hindu polyhistor of dubious caste. He had
been writing for many years, still was and trusted
he would be granted Prana to f+inish, a monograph
provisionally entitled: \iThe\r \iPathetic\r \iFallacy\r
\ifrom\r \iAvercamp\r \ito\r \iKampendonck\r. But already he
began to complain of those sensations that some
weeks later, just as he stumbled on the Norwich
School for the f+irst time, were to drive him
to the gas-oven. "[My fut,"] he had said to
Miss Counihan, "['ave gut smaller than the
end of the needle."] And again: "[I want to
be up in the air."]
\S10:196  Mur
\N14 Then Miss Counihan had to be free to twist
Wylie and this was perhaps her best reason for
keeping him at a distance. She bribed and
browbeat Cooper into reporting to her at the
end of every day before he did so to Wylie;
and directed by Cooper she went to Neary behind
Wylie's back and made a clean breast of the
whole situation.
\S10:196  Mur
\N22 Wylie protested bitterly against this cruel
treatment, which suited him down to the muck.
For Miss Counihan was not one of those delights
peculiar to London, with which he proposed
to indulge himself up to the hilt and the utmost
limit of her liberality. It was only in Dublin,
where the profession had gone to the dogs, that
\P10:197  Mur
\N1 Miss Counihan could stand out as the object
of desire of a man of taste. If Neary had not
been cured of her by London, he was less than
a man, or more than a saint. Turf is compulsory
in the Saorstat, but one need not bring a private
supply to Newcastle.
\S10:197  Mur
\N7 His other reason for satisfaction with the
turn events had taken, or been so kindly given
by Miss Counihan, was of course the same as
hers, namely, that he could now double-cross
her in perfect comfort and security. He browbeat
Cooper (but did not bribe him) into
reporting to him at the end of every day
before he did so to Miss Counihan; and
directed by Cooper he went to Neary behind Miss
Counihan's back and made a clean breast of
the whole situation that was the complement of
hers.
\S10:197  Mur
\N19  Such were the chief grounds for the partition,
which was not however so inf+lexible that they
could not contrive, now and then after supper,
to meet on neutral ground and compare notes
and ruts.
\S10:197  Mur
\N24 Cooper experienced none of the famous diff+iculty
in serving two employers. He neither
clave nor despised. A lesser man would have
sided with one or the other, a bigger blackmailed
both. But Cooper was the perfect size
\P10:198  Mur
\N1 for the servant so long as he kept off the bottle
and he moved incorruptible between his
corruptors with the beautiful indifference of
a shuttle, without infamy and without praise.
To each he made a full and frank report,
ignoring the emendations of the other; and
made it f+irst to whichever of the two was more
convenient to the point at which dusk surprised
him.
\S10:198  Mur
\N10 He did not try to reinstate himself with Neary,
feeling it might be wiser to wait till Neary sent
for him. He also felt a shade less wretched
as the coadjutor of a pair of twisters, who not
only knew next to nothing about him but seemed
in a fair way to being as crapulous as himself,
than as the catspaw of a hardened toff, who
knew all, including much that he himself had
contrived to forget. Did it perhaps mark the
beginning, this slight loss of misery, of that
fuller life that Wylie had dangled before him
in Dublin? "[In a short time you will be sitting
down and taking off your hat and doing all
the things that are impossible at present .+.+. ."]
Cooper thought it unlikely.
\S10:198  Mur
\N25 The relief to Neary was so great that he
relaxed and went to bed, vowing not to get up
till news of Murphy should be brought to him.
He wrote to Miss Counihan:
\P10:199  Mur
\S10:199  Mur
\N1 "[I can never forget your loyalty. One person
at least I can trust. Keep Judas Wylie on
your hands. Tell Cooper he serves me in
serving you. Come when you have news of
Murphy, not before. It is too painful. Then
you shall not f+ind me ungrateful."]
\S10:199  Mur
\N7 And to Wylie:
\S10:199  Mur
\N8 "[I can never forget your loyalty. You at
least will not betray me. Tell Cooper your
favour is mine. Keep Jezabel Counihan on your
hands. Come again when Murphy is found,
not before. It is too trying. Then you shall
f+ind me not ungrateful."]
\S10:199  Mur
\N14 Neary was indeed cured of Miss Counihan,
as completely and f+inally as though she had
bowed, in the manner of Miss Dwyer, to his
wishes; but by means very different from those
to which Wylie had responded so splendidly.
In Wylie's case, properly speaking, it was less
a matter of cure than of convalescence. For
Miss Counihan had already been bowing, or
rather nodding, to his wishes, or rather whims,
for long enough to make further homeopathy
unnecessary.
\S10:199  Mur
\N25 It is curious how Wylie's words remained
f+ixed in the minds of those to whom they had
once been addressed. It must have been the
tone of voice. Cooper, whose memory for such
\P10:200  Mur
\N1 things was really very poor, had recovered,
word for word, the merest of mere phrases.
And now Neary lay on his bed, repeating: "[The
syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit
of palliation. For every symptom that is eased,
another is made worse. The horse leech's
daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of
wantum cannot vary."]
\S10:200  Mur
\N9 He thought of his latest \ivoltefesses\r, at once
so pleasant and so painful. Pleasant, in that
Miss Counihan had been eased; painful, in
that Murphy had been made worse; \ifesses\r,
as being the part best qualif+ied by nature not
only to be kicked but also to mock the kicker,
a paradox strikingly illustrated by Socrates,
when he turned up the tail of his abolla at the
trees.
\S10:200  Mur
\N18 Was his need any less for the sudden transformation
of Murphy from the key that would
open Miss Counihan to the one and only earthly
hope of friendship and all that friendship carried
with it? (Neary's conception of friendship was
very curious. He expected it to last. He never
said, when speaking of an enemy: "[He used
to be a friend of mine"], but always, with affected
precision: "[I used to think he was a friend
of mine."]) Was his need any less? It felt
greater, but might well be the same. "[The
\P10:201  Mur
\N1 advantage of this view is, that while one may
not look forward to things getting any better,
at least one need not fear their getting any
worse. They will always be the same as they
always were."]
\S10:201  Mur
\N6 He writhed on his back in the bed, yearning
for Murphy as though he had never yearned
for anything or anyone before. He turned
over and buried his face in the pillow, folding
up its wings till they met at the back of his
neck, and could not but remark how pleasant
it was to feel for a change the weight of his
bottom on his belly after so many hours of the
converse distribution. But keeping his head
resolutely buried and enveloped he groaned:
"[\iLe\r \ipou\r \iest\r \imort\r. \iVive\r \ile\r \ipou\r!"] And a little
later, being by then almost stif+led: "[Is there
no f+lea that found at last dies without issue?
No keyf+lea?"]
\S10:201  Mur
\N20 It was from just this consideration that Murphy,
while still less than a child, had set out to capture
himself, not with anger but with love. This
was a stroke of genius that Neary, a Newtonian,
could never have dealt himself nor suffered
another to deal him. There seems really very
little hope for Neary, he seems doomed to
hope unending. He has something of Hugo.
The f+ire will not depart from his eye, nor the
\P10:202  Mur
\N1 water from his mouth, as he scratches himself
out of one itch into the next, until he shed his
mortal mange, supposing that to be permitted.
\S10:202  Mur
\N4 Murphy then is actually being needed by
f+ive people outside himself. By Celia, because
she loves him. By Neary, because he thinks
of him as the Friend at last. By Miss Counihan,
because she wants a surgeon. By Cooper,
because he is being employed to that end. By
Wylie, because he is reconciled to doing Miss
Counihan the honour, in the not too distant
future, of becoming her husband. Not only
did she stand out in Dublin and in Cork as quite
exceptionally anthropoid, but she had private
means.
\S10:202  Mur
\N16 Note that of all these reasons love alone
did not splutter towards its end. Not because
it was Love, but because there were no means
at its disposal. When its end had been Murphy
transf+igured and transformed, happily caught
up in some salaried routine, means had not
been lacking. Now that its end was Murphy
at any price, in whatsoever shape or form, so
long as he was lovable, i\.e\. present in person,
means were lacking, as Murphy had warned
her they would be. Women are really extraordinary,
the way they want to give their cake
to the cat and have it. They never quite kill
\P10:203  Mur
\N1 the thing they think they love, lest their instinct
for artif+icial respiration should go abegging.
\S10:203  Mur
\N4 As Gower Street was more convenient to
Brewery Road than was Earl's Court, where
Wylie had found a sitting-bedroom, it was to
Miss Counihan that Cooper f+irst hastened with
the news that Murphy's woman had been run
to earth at last, and the astute comment that
where a man's woman was, there it was only
a question of time before that man would be
also.
\S10:203  Mur
\N13 "[Who says she is his woman?"] hissed Miss
Counihan. "[Describe the bitch."]
\S10:203  Mur
\N15 Cooper with sure instinct took refuge in the
dusk, the suspense, the distance he had had
to keep, the posterior aspect (surely a very
thin excuse), and so on. For of the inf+inite
criticisms of Murphy's woman that could have
been devised, from loathing to enthusiasm, there
was not one but must have caused Miss Counihan
pain. Because either a drab had been preferred
to her, or else a woman more exquisite than
herself existed, either of which was a proposition
too painful to be borne in the mouth of a man,
even though that man were only Cooper.
\S10:203  Mur
\N27 "[Not a word to a soul,"] said Miss Counihan.
"[What number again in Brewery Road did
\P10:204  Mur
\N1 you say? Remember it has been just another
blank day. Here is a f+lorin I believe."]
\S10:204  Mur
\N3 She unpinned and unbuttoned herself as she
spoke. Clearly she was in a great hurry to get
off her things. She never ref+lected, to give
her her due, that Cooper for all his shortcomings
was a man like other men, with passions just
like theirs, namely made to f+it hers.
\S10:204  Mur
\N9 "[And to-morrow,"] she said, stepping out of
her step-ins, "[you set off in the morning as usual,
but not to look for Murphy-+-here, damn it, I will
make it half a crown-+-but to look for Mrs\. Neary.
Mrs\. Neary,"] she repeated an octave higher,
"[Adriadne bloody Neary, misbegotten Cox, more
pippin than orange no doubt, though personally,"]
with a sigh and milder voice snapping open her
corset, "[I have nothing against the poor wretch,
unless you hear to the contrary."]
\S10:204  Mur
\N19 The interview with Wylie was less trying
to Cooper, and less lucrative, for Wylie was
at the end of his resources, until he should see
Miss Counihan again.
\S10:204  Mur
\N23 Wylie's mind belonged to the same great
group as Miss Counihan's.
\S10:204  Mur
\N25 "[Drop Murphy,"] he said, "[forget him and
get after the Cox."]
\S10:204  Mur
\N27 Cooper waited for the rest, but Wylie put on
his hat and coat, said, "[After you, Cooper"],
\P10:205  Mur
\N1 then not another word till in the street, "[How
do you go now, Cooper?"]
\S10:205  Mur
\N3 Cooper had not given this a thought. He
indicated a direction at a venture.
\S10:205  Mur
\N5 "[Then I'll be saying good night, Cooper,"]
said Wylie. But after a few paces he pulled
up with the air of one who suddenly remembers,
stood stock still for a second and then turned
back to where Cooper, neither impatient nor
amused, was waiting.
\S10:205  Mur
\N11 "[I nearly forgot to say,"] he said, "[that
when you see Miss Counihan-+-you will be
seeing her now, won't you, Cooper?"]
\S10:205  Mur
\N14 The skill is really extraordinary with which
analphabetes, especially those of Irish education,
circumvent their dread of verbal commitments.
Now Cooper's face, though it did not seem to move
a muscle, brought together and threw off in a single
grimace the f+inest shades of irresolution, revulsion,
doglike devotion, catlike discretion, fatigue,
hunger, thirst and reserves of strength, in a very
small fraction of the time that the f+inest oratory
would require for a greatly inferior evasion, and
without exposing its proprietor to misquotation.
\S10:205  Mur
\N25 "[Don't I know,"] said Wylie. "[But just in
case you should, remember there is nothing
new, not a thing to report. You know what
women are when it comes to women."]
\P10:206  Mur
\S10:206  Mur
\N1 If Cooper did not possess this knowledge it
was not for lack of an occasion, a melancholy
occasion, of which perhaps the most regrettable
result was this, that of the only two good angels
he had ever been able to care for, simultaneously
as ill luck would have it, the one, a Miss A,
then a brunette, was now in her seventeenth
year of His Majesty's pleasure, while the other,
a Miss B, also formerly a brunette, had not
yet succumbed to her injuries. Yet properly
speaking the knowledge was not his, it was not
present to him as an everyday precaution as it
was to Wylie, and to Neary, and indeed to most
men, though they gain it at far less cost, and
even in some cases \ia\r \ipriori\r. For the bitter
blow was one of those referred to above, forgotten
almost entirely at great pains by Cooper and
at scarcely less pains almost in its entirety reconstructed
by Neary. What the former could
still recall, because it did not pain him, and
the latter had never known, because it did not
interest him, was the merest scene of tenderness
or two, with Miss A before he met Miss B, and
again with Miss B before she met Miss A.
\S10:206  Mur
\N25 "[I say you know what women are,"] said
Wylie impatiently, "[or has your entire life been
spent in Cork?"]
\S10:206  Mur
\N28 Cooper's head toppled forward and his hands,
\P10:207  Mur
\N1 small, white, numb, sodden, hairless, but actually
quite dexterous, toiled up a little through the
dark. He said:
\S10:207  Mur
\N4 "[That'll be all right."]
\S10:207  Mur
\N5 "[Or is there perhaps some fair charmer,"]
said Wylie, "[that blinds you to her sex? Some
young person? Come now, Cooper."]
\S10:207  Mur
\N8 Cooper dropped his hands, forced his head
round to look at Wylie and said, in much
the same dead tone:
\S10:207  Mur
\N11 "[That will be all right."]
\S10:207  Mur
\N13 Night had scarcely fallen and yet already
Neary, his pyjamas torn from his body and
f+lung on the f+loor, was tossing under a sheet,
wondering would morning never come, when
Miss Counihan was announced. Seeing that
he was not disposed to get up and make much
of her, she seated herself with a desinvolture
she was far from feeling on the end of the bed,
as though it were a bank of bluebells somewhere
in the country. Under the sheet his icy feet
were crossed and crispated like talons on a hotwater
bag. For it tickled his smattering of
Greek urns, where Sleep was f+igured with crossed
feet, and frequently also Sleep's young brother,
to cross his whenever he felt wakeful. Also he
had some vague theory about his terminals
\P10:208  Mur
\N1 being thereby connected, and his life force
prevented from escaping. But now with sleep
out of the question, and Miss Counihan's hot
buttered buttocks so close, he uncrossed his
feet and kicked the bag out of the bed, on the
wall side. It burst on the f+loor without a
sound, so that water is oozing towards the centre
of the f+loor throughout the scene that follows.
\S10:208  Mur
\N9 In a somewhat similar way Celia had sat
on Mr\. Kelly's bed, and on Murphy's, though
Mr\. Kelly had had his shirt on.
\S10:208  Mur
\N12 They had not been closeted together very
long and Miss Counihan, choking with mortif+ication,
had not yet succeeded in persuading
Neary that who found Celia found Murphy
also, when Wylie was announced. Miss Counihan
shot off the bed and cast round wildly
for a way of escape or a place of concealment.
\S10:208  Mur
\N19 "[Curtains collect the dirt so,"] said Neary,
"[that I never have them. I fear you would
not pass through the door of my cupboard,
not even sideways, not even frontways rather.
There is no balcony. I hesitate to suggest under
the bed."]
\S10:208  Mur
\N25 Miss Counihan f+lew to the door, locked it
and took out the key, even as Wylie knocked.
\S10:208  Mur
\N27 "[I am sorry there is no staple to put your
arm through,"] said Neary.
\P10:209  Mur
\S10:209  Mur
\N1 Wylie tore at the handle, calling, "[It is I,
it is Needle."] Miss Counihan threw herself
on Neary's mercy, not by word of mouth obviously,
but with bended knee, panting bosom,
clasped hands, passion-dimmed belladonna, etc\.
\S10:209  Mur
\N6 "[Come in,"] cried Neary. "[Miss Counihan
has locked you out."]
\S10:209  Mur
\N8 Miss Counihan rose from the f+loor.
\S10:209  Mur
\N9 "[If your tart will not let you in,"] cried Neary,
"[stay where you are, I have rung for the
chamber pot."]
\S10:209  Mur
\N12 But Miss Counihan did not know when she
was beaten, or, if she did, her way of showing
it was unusual. For it did not require a
woman of her resource and experience to go
off into peals of mischievous laughter, f+ling
open the door and pass the whole thing off
as a joke. Instead she sat down quietly in a
chair and waited for the chambermaid to come
and let Wylie in. She must have preferred,
all things rapidly considered, the few moments
thus snatched from the show-down, in which
to revise her strategy, to a cut-and-dried tactic
affording only temporary relief. No, Miss Counihan
did not know when she was beaten.
\S10:209  Mur
\N26 There was now the usual calm after storm,
Neary sitting up in the bed and feasting his eyes
on Miss Counihan, Miss Counihan absorbed
\P10:210  Mur
\N1 in her problem tapping her teeth thoughtfully
with the key, Wylie on the other side of
the door exactly half inclined to tiptoe away,
the chambermaid far away in her dark cavern
waiting for the bell to ring a second time.
When it did, proving with a single peal that
the summons was seriously intended and that
her hearing had not deceived her, she set off
without rancour and in a short time was knocking
at the door.
\S10:210  Mur
\N11 "[The gentleman is locked out,"] called Neary.
"[Let him in."]
\S10:210  Mur
\N13 Wylie strode in much too boldly and Miss
Counihan rose.
\S10:210  Mur
\N15 "[Good girl,"] said Neary. "[ Now lock the
door behind the gentleman."]
\S10:210  Mur
\N17 Wylie and Miss Counihan met face to face,
a trying experience for them both.
\S10:210  Mur
\N19 "[You cur,"] said Miss Counihan, getting her
blow in f+irst.
\S10:210  Mur
\N21 "[You bitch,"] said Wylie.
\S10:210  Mur
\N22 They belonged to the same great group.
\S10:210  Mur
\N23 "[You take the tone out of my mouth,"] said
Neary, "[if not the terms."]
\S10:210  Mur
\N25 "[You cur,"] said Miss Counihan, making a
bid for the last word.
\S10:210  Mur
\N27 "[Before you go any further-+--+-"] said Neary.
\S10:210  Mur
\N28 The f+irst round was Miss Counihan's and her
\P10:211  Mur
\N1 forces were still intact. She sat down and Wylie
moved over to the bed. He was equipped by
nature to feel a situation, and adjust himself
to it, more rapidly than Miss Counihan, but
she had the advantage of a short start.
\S10:211  Mur
\N6 "[This lock-out,"] said Neary, "[don't misunderstand
it whatever you do."]
\S10:211  Mur
\N8 "[I think more highly of you than that,"] said
Wylie.
\S10:211  Mur
\N10 "[\iI\r thank you,"] said Neary, like a London
bus or tram conductor tendered the exact fare.
\S10:211  Mur
\N12 It struck Miss Counihan with sudden force
that here were two men, against whom she
could never prevail, even were her cause a just
one.
\S10:211  Mur
\N16 "[And no doubt your great piece of news
is the same as your doxy's,"] said Neary, "[that
Cooper has picked up a woman with whom a
glimpse of Murphy was once caught."]
\S10:211  Mur
\N20 "[She was not exactly seen with him,"] said
Wylie, "[only entering the house where he was
known to be at that time."]
\S10:211  Mur
\N23 "[And you call this f+inding Murphy,"] said
Neary.
\S10:211  Mur
\N25 "[Cooper feels it in his bones,"] said Wylie,
"[and so do I, that this beautiful woman will
lead us to him."]
\S10:211  Mur
\N28 "[Uric acid,"] said Neary.
\P10:212  Mur
\S10:212  Mur
\N1 "[But if Miss Counihan believes,"] said Wylie,
"[who are we to doubt?"]
\S10:212  Mur
\N3 Miss Counihan bit her lip that she had not
thought of this argument, which opened and
closed Neary's mouth a number of times. He
found it forcible-+-and he craved to get up.
\S10:212  Mur
\N7 "[If you, Wylie,"] he said, "[will pass me up
my pyjamas, and you, Miss Counihan, take
notice that I shall emerge from under this
sheet incomparably more naked than the day
I was born, I shall break my bed."] Wylie
passed up the pyjamas and Miss Counihan
covered her eyes. "[Do not be alarmed, Wylie,"]
said Neary, "[the vast majority are bedsores."]
He sat on the edge of the bed in his pyjamas.
"[It is no use my trying to stand,"] he said,
"[nothing is more exhausting than a long rest
in bed, so now, Miss Counihan, when you like."]
\S10:212  Mur
\N19 Miss Counihan stole a look and was so far
moved from her grievances as to say:
\S10:212  Mur
\N21 "[Surely we could make you a little more
comfortable?"]
\S10:212  Mur
\N23 Here the keyword was we, a little f+inger of
reconciliation extended to Wylie. Without it
the phrase was merely polite, or, at the best,
kind. It did not escape Wylie, who looked most
willing to be helpful all over.
\S10:212  Mur
\N28 From the moment that Neary, breaking his
\P10:213  Mur
\N1 bed, admitted that Murphy was found, from
the moment namely that on this one point at
least they were agreed not to differ, a notable
change for the better had come over the atmosphere,
now one almost of reciprocal tolerance.
\S10:213  Mur
\N6 "[Nothing can surprise me any more,"] said
Neary.
\S10:213  Mur
\N8 Miss Counihan and Wylie sprang forward,
worked Neary on to his feet, supported him to
a chair in the window, lowered him into it.
\S10:213  Mur
\N11 "[The whiskey is under the bed,"] said Neary.
\S10:213  Mur
\N12 It was at this moment that they all saw
simultaneously for the f+irst time, and with
common good breeding refrained from remarking,
the slender meanders of water on the f+loor.
Miss Counihan however would not have any
whiskey. Wylie raised his glass and said: "[To
the absentee"], a tactful description of Murphy
under the circumstances. Miss Counihan honoured
this toast with a strong intake of breath.
\S10:213  Mur
\N21 "[Sit down, the two of you, there before me,"]
said Neary, "[and do not despair. Remember
there is no triangle, however obtuse, but the
circumference of some circle passes through its
wretched vertices. Remember also one thief
was saved."]
\S10:213  Mur
\N27 "[Our medians,"] said Wylie, "[or whatever
the hell they are, meet in Murphy."]
\P10:214  Mur
\S10:214  Mur
\N1 "[Outside us,"] said Neary. "[Outside us."]
\S10:214  Mur
\N2 "[In the outer light,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:214  Mur
\N3 Now it was Wylie's turn, but he could f+ind
nothing. No sooner did he realise this, that
he would not f+ind anything in time to do himself
credit, than he began to look as though he were
not looking for anything, nay, as though he
were waiting for it to be his turn. Finally
Neary said without pity:
\S10:214  Mur
\N10 "[You to play, Needle."]
\S10:214  Mur
\N11 "[And do the lady out of the last word!"]
cried Wylie. "[And put the lady to the trouble
of f+inding another! Reary, Neally!"]
\S10:214  Mur
\N14 "[No trouble,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:214  Mur
\N15 Now it was anybody's turn.
\S10:214  Mur
\N16 "[Very well,"] said Neary. "[What I was
really coming to, what I wanted to suggest,
is this. Let our conversation now be without
precedent in fact or literature, each one speaking
to the best of his ability the truth to the best
of his knowledge. That is what I meant when
I said you took the tone, if not the terms, out
of my mouth. It is high time we three parted."]
\S10:214  Mur
\N24 "[But the tone was bitter, I believe,"] said
Wylie. "[That certainly was my impression."]
\S10:214  Mur
\N26 "[I was not thinking of the tone of voice,"]
said Neary, "[so much as of the tone of
mind, the spirit's approach. But continue,
\P10:215  Mur
\N1 Wylie, by all means. Might not the truth be
snarled?"]
\S10:215  Mur
\N3 "[Coleridge-Taylor played with feeling?"] said
Wylie.
\S10:215  Mur
\N5 "[A perfume thrown on the horehound?"]
said Miss Counihan.
\S10:215  Mur
\N7 "[The guillotine sterilised?"] said Wylie.
\S10:215  Mur
\N8 "[Floodlit the midnight sun?"] said Miss
Counihan.
\S10:215  Mur
\N10 "[We look on the dark side,"] said Neary.
"[It is undeniably less trying to the eyes."]
\S10:215  Mur
\N12 "[What you suggest is abominable,"] said
Wylie, "[an insult to human nature."]
\S10:215  Mur
\N14 "[Not at all,"] said Neary. "[Listen to this."]
\S10:215  Mur
\N15 "[I must be off,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:215  Mur
\N16 Neary began to speak, or, as it rather sounded,
be spoken through. For the voice was f+lat, the
eyes closed and the body bowed and rigid, as
though he were kneeling before a priest instead
of sitting before two sinners. Altogether he had
a great look of Luke's portrait of Matthew,
with the angel perched like a parrot on his
shoulder.
\S10:215  Mur
\N24 "[Almost madly in love with Miss Counihan
some short weeks ago, now I do not even dislike
her. Betrayed by Wylie in my trust and friendship,
I do not even bother to forgive him. The
missing Murphy from being a means to a trivial
\P10:216  Mur
\N1 satisfaction, the contingent, as he himself would
say, of a contingent, is become in himself an
end, the end, my end, unique and indispensable."]
\S10:216  Mur
\N4 The f+low ceased. What truth has not its
ballcock?
\S10:216  Mur
\N6 "[The best of his knowledge,"] said Wylie.
\S10:216  Mur
\N7 "[To the best of his ability,"] said Miss Counihan.
"[Fair is fair."]
\S10:216  Mur
\N9 "[Shall I shoot now or will you?"] said Wylie.
\S10:216  Mur
\N10 "[Do not wait for an answer,"] said Miss
Counihan.
\S10:216  Mur
\N12 Wylie rose to his feet, hooked the thumb of
his left hand in the armhole of his waistcoat,
covered his pra+ecordia with his right and said:
\S10:216  Mur
\N15 "[This Neary that does not love Miss Counihan,
nor need his Needle, any more, may he soon
get over Murphy and f+ind himself free, following
his drift, to itch for an ape, or a woman writer."]
\S10:216  Mur
\N19 "[But this is Old Moore,"] said Miss Counihan,
"[not the \iWeekly\r \iIrish\r \iTimes\r."]
\S10:216  Mur
\N21 "[My attitude,"] said Wylie, "[being the auscultation,
execution and adequation of the voices,
or rather voice, of Reason and Philautia, does
not change. I continue to regard this Neary
as a bull Io, born to be stung, Nature's gift to
necessitous pimps; Miss Counihan as the only
nubile amateur to my certain knowledge in
the Twenty-six Counties who does not confuse
\P10:217  Mur
\N1 her self with her body, and one of the few bodies,
in the same bog, equal to the distinction;
Murphy as a vermin at all costs to be
avoided-+--+-"]
\S10:217  Mur
\N5 Miss Counihan and Neary laughed profusely.
\S10:217  Mur
\N6 "[He is so importunate,"] said Neary.
\S10:217  Mur
\N7 "[So pushing,"] said Miss Counihan, "[so
thrusting."]
\S10:217  Mur
\N9 "[As an abomination,"] said Wylie, "[the
creepy thing that creepeth of the Law. Yet
I pursue him."]
\S10:217  Mur
\N12 "[I pay you to,"] said Neary.
\S10:217  Mur
\N13 "[Or so you hope,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:217  Mur
\N14 "[Even so the beggar mutilates himself,"] said
Wylie, "[that he may live, and the beaver
bites his off."]
\S10:217  Mur
\N17 He sat down, stood up again immediately,
resumed his pose and said:
\S10:217  Mur
\N19 "[In a word I stand where I have always
stood-+--+-"]
\S10:217  Mur
\N21 "[Since Heaven lay about you as a bedwetter,"]
said Neary.
\S10:217  Mur
\N23 "[And hope always to stand-+--+-"]
\S10:217  Mur
\N24 "[Until you drop,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:217  Mur
\N25 "[Half on the make and half on pleasure
bent."]
\S10:217  Mur
\N27 He sat down again and Miss Counihan seized
her opportunity, at just such intensity, pitch,
\P10:218  Mur
\N1 quality and speed as could conveniently be
worked up in the few words at her disposal.
\S10:218  Mur
\N3 "[There is a mind and there is a body-+--+-"]
\S10:218  Mur
\N4 "[Shame!"] cried Neary. "[Kick her arse!
Throw her out!"]
\S10:218  Mur
\N6 "[On the one parched palm,"] said Wylie, "[the
swelling heart, the dwindling liver, the foaming
spleen, two lungs with luck, with care two
kidneys, and so on."]
\S10:218  Mur
\N10 "[And so forth,"] said Neary, with a sigh.
\S10:218  Mur
\N11 "[And on the other,"] said Wylie, "[the little
ego and the big id."]
\S10:218  Mur
\N13 "[Inf+inite riches in a w\.c\.,"] said Neary.
\S10:218  Mur
\N14 "[This ineffable counterpoint,"] continued Miss
Counihan, "[this mutual comment, this sole
redeeming feature."] She stopped in preference
to being interrupted.
\S10:218  Mur
\N18 "[She quite forgets how it goes on,"] said Wylie,
"[she will have to go right back to the beginning,
like Darwin's caterpillar."]
\S10:218  Mur
\N21 "[Perhaps Murphy did not take her any
further,"] said Neary.
\S10:218  Mur
\N23 "[Everywhere I f+ind def+iled,"] continued Miss
Counihan, "[in the crass and unharmonious
unison, the mind at the cart-tail of the body,
the body at the chariot-wheels of the mind.
I name no names."]
\S10:218  Mur
\N28 "[Excellent reception,"] said Wylie.
\P10:219  Mur
\S10:219  Mur
\N1 "[No trace of fading,"] said Neary.
\S10:219  Mur
\N2 "[Everywhere that is,"] concluded Miss Counihan,
"[except where Murphy is. He did
not suffer from this-+-er-+-psychosomatic f+istula,
Murphy my f+iance+'. Both mind and body,
neither mind that is nor body, what can there
be beside him, after him what could there be,
but a puerile grossness or a senile agility?"]
\S10:219  Mur
\N9 "[Take your choice,"] said Wylie, "[pick your
fancy."]
\S10:219  Mur
\N11 "[Another semitone,"] said Neary, "[and we
had ceased to hear."]
\S10:219  Mur
\N13 "[Who knows but that we have?"] said
Wylie. "[Who knows what dirty story, what
even better dirty story, it may be even one we
have not heard before, told at some colossal
pitch of pure smut, beats at this moment in
vain against our eardrums?"]
\S10:219  Mur
\N19 "[For me,"] said Neary, with the same sigh
as before, "[the air is always full of such, soughing
with the bawdy innuendo of eternity."]
\S10:219  Mur
\N22 Miss Counihan rose, gathered her things
together, walked to the door and unlocked it
with the key that she exiled for that purpose
from her bosom. Standing in prof+ile against
the blazing corridor, with her high buttocks
and her low breasts, she looked not merely
queenly, but on for anything. And these impressions
\P10:220  Mur
\N1 she enhanced by simply advancing
one foot a pace, settling all her weight on the
other, inclining her bust no more than was
necessary to preserve her from falling down
backwards and placing her hands upon her
moons, plump and plain. In this position
lightly but f+irmly poised she said, into her lap,
in a voice like a distant rake on gravel in a
winter gloaming:
\S10:220  Mur
\N10 "[Now that we have let the cat out of the
bag-+--+-"]
\S10:220  Mur
\N12 "[The pig out of the poke,"] said Wylie.
\S10:220  Mur
\N13 "[How are we advantaged?"]
\S10:220  Mur
\N14 "[Wylie,"] said Neary, "[have a little consideration,
you are right in her line of f+ire."]
\S10:220  Mur
\N16 "[The Goddess of Gout,"] said Wylie, "[brooding
over a Doan's Pill."]
\S10:220  Mur
\N18 "[Do not imagine for a moment I want you
to go,"] said Neary, "[but this little creature
is mano+euvring to see you home."]
\S10:220  Mur
\N21 "[Tut! tut!"] said Wylie, "[I may not be a
trueborn jackeen, but I am better than nothing.
My superiority to nothing has often been
commented on."]
\S10:220  Mur
\N25 "[I repeat my question,"] said Miss Counihan,
"[and am prepared to do so again if necessary."]
\S10:220  Mur
\N27 "[If the cock does not crow then,"] said Wylie,
"[depend upon it the hen has not laid."]
\P10:221  Mur
\S10:221  Mur
\N1 "[But have I not said,"] said Neary, "[now
we can part? Surely that is a great advantage."]
\S10:221  Mur
\N3 "[Do you really mean to sit there and tell
me,"] said Miss Counihan, "[\ime\r, that you consider
we are now met?"]
\S10:221  Mur
\N6 Wylie covered his ears, threw back his head
and cried:
\S10:221  Mur
\N8 "[Stop it! Or is it too late?"]
\S10:221  Mur
\N9 High above his head he tossed his arms,
set off in a rapid shuff+le, seized Miss Counihan's
hands, raised them gently clear of her rump.
In a moment they would hit the trail.
\S10:221  Mur
\N13 "[Who ever met,"] said Miss Counihan, not in
the least perturbed apparently, "[if it comes
to that, that met not at f+irst sight?"]
\S10:221  Mur
\N16 "[There is only one meeting and parting,"]
said Wylie. "[The act of love."]
\S10:221  Mur
\N18 "[Fancy that!"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:221  Mur
\N19 "[Then each with and from himself,"] said
Wylie, "[as well as with and from the other."]
\S10:221  Mur
\N21 "[With and from him and herself,"] said
Neary, "[have a little conduction, Wylie. Remember
a lady is present."]
\S10:221  Mur
\N24 "[You,"] said Wylie bitterly, "[I was to f+ind you
not ungrateful. As no doubt also this poor girl."]
\S10:221  Mur
\N26 "[Not quite,"] said Miss Counihan. "[I was
merely not to f+ind him ungrateful."]
\S10:221  Mur
\N28 "[Point three,"] said Neary in reply. "[I do
\P10:222  Mur
\N1 not ask to speak to Murphy. Show him only
to these eyes of f+lesh and the money is yours."]
\S10:222  Mur
\N3 "[He may feel,"] said Miss Counihan, "[you
can never tell, that having deceived him once,
we are capable of doing so again."]
\S10:222  Mur
\N6 "[An obole on account,"] begged Wylie.
"[Charity edif+ieth."]
\S10:222  Mur
\N8 "[Point one,"] said Neary. "[It does not
require even as little as this celebrated act of
love, if acts indeed can ever be of love, or love
survive in acts, to bid one's neighbour the
time of day, the smile and the nod on the way
in at evening, the scowl and no nod on the way
out at morning, in the way described by Wylie.
And to meet and part in my sense exceeds the
power of feeling, however tender, and of bodily
motions, however expert."]
\S10:222  Mur
\N18 He paused to be asked what his sense was.
Wylie was the mug.
\S10:222  Mur
\N20 "[The repudiation of the known,"] said Neary,
"[a purely intellectual operation of unspeakable
diff+iculty."]
\S10:222  Mur
\N23 "[Perhaps you hadn't heard,"] said Wylie,
"[Hegel arrested his development."]
\S10:222  Mur
\N25 "[Point two,"] said Neary. "[Far be it from
me to sit here and suggest to Miss Counihan
that we are now met. There are still things
that even I do not say to a lady. But I think
\P10:223  Mur
\N1 it is not a naivete+' to hope that the ice has been
broken, nor a presumption to count on the
Almighty to pull off the rest."]
\S10:223  Mur
\N4 The light in the corridor went out with a
crash, Wylie reined in Miss Counihan against
an abyss of blackness. Neary cast his voice
into the dying ache of echoes:
\S10:223  Mur
\N8 "[There He blows, or I am greatly mistaken."]
\S10:223  Mur
\N9 Wylie felt suddenly tired of holding Miss
Counihan's hands at precisely the same moment
as she did of having them held, a merciful
coincidence. He let them go and the dark
swallowed her up. She leaned against the
outer wall and sobbed distinctly. It had been
a trying experience.
\S10:223  Mur
\N16 "[Till to-morrow at ten,"] said Wylie. "[Leave
out your cheque-book."]
\S10:223  Mur
\N18 "[Do not leave me alone like this,"] said Neary,
"[crackling with sins, my lips still moist with
impieties tossed off in the heat of controversy."]
\S10:223  Mur
\N21 "[You hear that storm of snivelling,"] said
Wylie, "[yet all you think of is yourself."]
\S10:223  Mur
\N23 "[Tell her from an old f+licker,"] said Neary,
"[when you have licked them all away, that
not one was idle."]
\S10:223  Mur
\N26 After some further reproaches, to which he
received no answer, Wylie went away with
Miss Counihan.
\P10:224  Mur
\S10:224  Mur
\N1 A curious feeling had come over Neary,
namely that he would not get through the night.
He had felt this before, but never quite so
strongly. In particular he felt that to move
a muscle or utter a syllable would certainly
prove fatal. He breathed with heavy caution
through the long hours of darkness, trembled
uncontrollably and clutched the chair-arms.
He did not feel cold, far from it, nor unwell,
nor in pain; he simply had this alarming
conviction that every second was going to
announce itself the f+irst of his last ten minutes
or a quarter of an hour on earth. The number
of seconds in one dark night is a simple calculation
that the curious reader will work out for
himself.
\S10:224  Mur
\N18 When Wylie called the following afternoon,
four or f+ive hours late, Neary's hair was white
as snow, but he felt better in himself.
\S10:224  Mur
\N21 "[A curious feeling came over me,"] he said,
"[just as you were leaving, that I was going to
start dying."]
\S10:224  Mur
\N24 "[So you have,"] said Wylie. "[You look like
a Junior Fellow already."]
\S10:224  Mur
\N26 "[I think perhaps if I were to go out now,"]
said Neary, "[and mix a little with the canaille,
it might do me good."]
\P10:225  Mur
\S10:225  Mur
\N1 "[Bloomsbury is on our way,"] said Wylie.
"[Don't forget your cheque-book."]
\S10:225  Mur
\N3 In Gower Street Wylie said:
\S10:225  Mur
\N4 "[How do you feel now?"]
\S10:225  Mur
\N5 "[\iI\r thank you,"] said Neary, "[life does not
seem so precious."]
\S10:225  Mur
\N7 Miss Counihan was handing it out to her
Hindu in a steady stream. He stood before
her in an attitude of considerable dejection,
his hands pressed tightly over his eyes. As
Neary and Wylie approached he made a wild
gesture of metaphysical liquidation and sprang
into a taxi that happened to be passing or, as
he f+irmly believed, was clocking off an inscrutable
schedule from all eternity.
\S10:225  Mur
\N16 "[Poor fellow,"] said Miss Counihan. "[He
is off to Millbank."]
\S10:225  Mur
\N18 "[And how are we this morning?"] said Neary
with horrible solicitude and a leer at Wylie.
"[Lassata?"]
\S10:225  Mur
\N21 Wylie simpered.
\S10:225  Mur
\N22 They set off for Brewery Road in a taxi. For
fully one minute not a word was spoken. Then
Wylie said:
\S10:225  Mur
\N25 "[After all, there is nothing like dead silence.
My one dread was lest our conversation of last
night should resume us where it left us off."]
\S10:225  Mur
\N28 Miss Carridge f+lew to the window at the unwonted
\P10:226  Mur
\N1 sound. No taxi had ever stopped in
good faith at her door, though one had done
so once by error, and another in derision. She
appeared on the threshold with a Bible in one
hand and a poker in the other.
\S10:226  Mur
\N6 "[Have you a Mr\. Murphy staying here?"]
said Wylie.
\S10:226  Mur
\N8 "[We have come all the way from Cork,"]
said Neary, "[we have torn ourselves away from
the groves of Blarney, for the sole purpose of
cajoling him in private."]
\S10:226  Mur
\N12 "[We are his very dear friends,"] said Miss
Counihan, "[and our news his good, what is
more."]
\S10:226  Mur
\N15 "[Mr\. Murphy,"] said Wylie, "[the ruins of
the ruins of the broth of a boy."]
\S10:226  Mur
\N17 "[Mr\. Murphy is away on business,"] said
Miss Carridge.
\S10:226  Mur
\N19 Wylie crammed his handkerchief into his
mouth.
\S10:226  Mur
\N21 "[Do not watch him too narrowly,"] said Neary,
"[and you will see him take it out of his ear."]
\S10:226  Mur
\N23 "[We expect him hourly,"] said Miss Carridge.
\S10:226  Mur
\N24 "[What did I tell you?"] said Miss Counihan.
"[Sweating his soul out in the East End, so that
I may have all the little luxuries to which I am
accustomed."]
\S10:226  Mur
\N28 Wylie took advantage of the confusion that
\P10:227  Mur
\N1 followed these words, Neary and Miss Carridge
not knowing where to look and the eyes of
Miss Counihan closed in an ecstasy of some
kind, to take the silk handkerchief out of his
ear, blow his nose, wipe his eyes and return it
to his pocket. It might truly be said to have
done the rounds, Wylie's silk handkerchief.
\S10:227  Mur
\N8 "[But if you care to step in,"] said Miss Carridge,
moving sportingly to one side, "[\iMrs\.\r Murphy
would see you I haven't a doubt, not a doubt."]
\S10:227  Mur
\N11 Miss Counihan congratulated herself on having
closed her eyes when she did. With closed eyes,
she said to herself, one cannot go far wrong.
Unless one is absolutely alone. Then it is not
necessary to-+-er-+-blink at such a rate.
\S10:227  Mur
\N16 "[If you are quite sure you are quite sure,"]
said Wylie.
\S10:227  Mur
\N18 It was at this moment that they all caught
simultaneously for the f+irst time, and with
common good breeding refrained from remarking,
a waft of Miss Carridge's peculiarity. But
now there was no turning back. They all felt
that, as the door closed behind them.
\S10:227  Mur
\N24 So all things hobble together for the only
possible.
\S10:227  Mur
\N26 Miss Carridge ushered them into the big
room, where Murphy and Celia had met and
parted so often, in a very house-proud manner.
\P10:228  Mur
\N1 For the char had never been in better form.
The lemon of the walls whined like Vermeer's;
and even Miss Counihan, collapsed on one of
the Balzac chairs, was inclined to regret her
ref+lection in the linoleum. Similarly before
Claude's Narcissus in Trafalgar Square, high-class
whores with faces lately lifted have breathed
a malediction on the glass.
\S10:228  Mur
\N9 Without warning Neary exclaimed:
\S10:228  Mur
\N10 "[At the best, nothing; at the worst, this
again."]
\S10:228  Mur
\N12 Miss Carridge looked shocked, as well she
might. Wester than the Isle of Man she had
never set foot.
\S10:228  Mur
\N15 "[I hope,"] she said, "[you like my little
apartment, to let, if I may say so."]
\S10:228  Mur
\N17 "[The considered verdict on the greater life,"]
said Wylie, "[of one who can imagine nothing
worse than the lesser. Hardly the artistic type,
you will say."]
\S10:228  Mur
\N21 "[We are the Engels sisters,"] said Miss Counihan,
"[come to stay."]
\S10:228  Mur
\N23 Miss Carridge left her little apartment.
\S10:228  Mur
\N24 "[Hark!"] said Wylie, pointing upward.
\S10:228  Mur
\N25 A soft swaggering to and fro was audible.
\S10:228  Mur
\N26 "[Mrs\. M\.,"] said Wylie, "[never still, made
restless by the protracted absence of her young,
her ambitious husband."]
\P10:229  Mur
\S10:229  Mur
\N1 The footfalls came to an end.
\S10:229  Mur
\N2 "[She pauses to lean out of the window,"]
said Wylie. "[Nothing will induce her to throw
herself down till he actually heaves into view.
She has a sense of style."]
\S10:229  Mur
\N6 Neary's associations were normal to the point
of tedium. He thought of salts of lemon on the
steps of Wynn's Hotel, the livid colours of that
old vision closed his eyes, a wild evening's
green and yellow seen in a puddle.
\S10:229  Mur
\N11 "[The Engels sisters,"] said Miss Carridge,
"[craving a word with you."]
\S10:229  Mur
\N13 Celia, thank God for a Christian name at
last, dragged her tattered bust back into the
room, the old boy's.
\S10:229  Mur
\N16 "[Bosom friends of Mr\. Murphy,"] said Miss
Carridge, "[they came in a taxi."]
\S10:229  Mur
\N18 Celia raised her face. This caused Miss
Carridge to add, in some confusion:
\S10:229  Mur
\N20 "[But I needn't tell you that. Forgive me."]
\S10:229  Mur
\N21 "[Ah yes, you need,"] said Celia, "[omit no
material circumstance, I implore you. I have
been so busy, so busy, so absorbed, my swan
crossword you know, Miss Carridge, seeking
the rime, the panting syllable to rime with
breath, that I have been dead to the voices
of the street, dead and damned, Miss Carridge,
the myriad voices."]
\P10:230  Mur
\S10:230  Mur
\N1 Miss Carridge did not know which arm to
feel more thankful for, the Bible or the poker.
She tightened her hold evenly on each and
said:
\S10:230  Mur
\N5 "[Do not give way to despair, it is most
wrong."]
\S10:230  Mur
\N7 "[When I think of what I was,"] said Celia,
"[who I was, what I am, and now dead, on a
Sunday afternoon, with the sun singing, and
the birds shining, to the voices of the STREET,
then-+--+-"]
\S10:230  Mur
\N12 "[Be sober,"] said Miss Carridge, "[hope to
the end. Give yourself a bit of a wipe and
come down."]
\S10:230  Mur
\N15 Celia wrapped a waterproof of pale blush
buff about her, but did not give herself the
wipe.
\S10:230  Mur
\N18 "[I have nothing to be ashamed of, or to lose."]
\S10:230  Mur
\N19 Descending the stairs Miss Carridge pondered
this saying. On the landing outside the big
room, the landing where Celia had seen the
old boy for the f+irst time and last, she held
up the poker and said:
\S10:230  Mur
\N24 "[But everything to gain."]
\S10:230  Mur
\N25 "[Nothing to lose,"] said Celia. "[Therefore
nothing to gain."]
\S10:230  Mur
\N27 A long look of fellow-feeling f+illed the space
between them, with calm, pity and a touch
\P10:231  Mur
\N1 of contempt. They leaned against it as against
a solid wall of wool and looked at each other
across it. Then they continued on their ways,
Miss Carridge down what stairs remained,
Celia into their old room.
\S10:231  Mur
\N6 Bereft of motion, their lees of f+iner feeling in
a sudden swirl, Neary and Wylie sat and stared.
Miss Counihan took one look and returned
her gaze hastily to the linoleum. Wylie staggered
reverently to his feet. Celia exposed herself
formally with her back to the door, then walked
right through them and sat down on the edge
of the bed nearer the window, so that throughout
the scene that follows Murphy's half of the bed
is between her and them. Neary staggered
reverently to his feet.
\S10:231  Mur
\N17 "[I fear you are ill, Mrs\. Murphy,"] said
Miss Counihan.
\S10:231  Mur
\N19 "[You wished to see me,"] said Celia.
\S10:231  Mur
\N20 Neary and Wylie, feeling more and more
swine before a pearl, stood and stared. Miss
Counihan advanced to the edge of the bed nearer
the door, developing as she did so a small
bundle of Murphy's letters into a fan. With
this in her two hands she reached out across
the bed, f+lirted it open and shut in a manner
carefully calculated to annoy and said:
\S10:231  Mur
\N28 "[Here at a glance you have our \ibonam\r \if+idem\r;
\P10:232  Mur
\N1 and on closer inspection, whenever you please,
my correspondent's def+iciency in same."]
\S10:232  Mur
\N3 Celia looked dully from the letters to Miss
Counihan, and from Miss Counihan to her
companions, and from those petrif+ied f+igures to
the letters again, and f+inally right away from so
much dark f+lesh and word to the sky, under which
she had nothing to lose. Then she lay down
on the bed, not with any theatrical intention,
but in pure obedience to a sudden strong desire
to do so. The likelihood of its appearing
theatrical, or even positively affected, would
not have deterred her, if it had occurred to her.
She stretched herself out at the ease of her body
as naturally as though her solitude had been
without spectators.
\S10:232  Mur
\N17 "[One of the innumerable small retail redeemers,"]
sneered Miss Counihan, "[lodging her
pennyworth of pique in the post-golgothan kitty."]
\S10:232  Mur
\N20 But for Murphy's horror of the mental belch,
Celia would have recognised this phrase, if she
had heard it.
\S10:232  Mur
\N23 Miss Counihan brought her letters together
with the sound of a sharp faint explosion and
marched back to her place. Neary fetched his
chair resolutely to the head of the bed, in very
fair imitation of a man whose mind is made
up. And Wylie sat down with the air of a novice
\P10:233  Mur
\N1 at Divine Service, uncertain as to whether the
congregation ceasing in a soft perturbation to
stand is about to sit or kneel, and looking about
him wildly for a sign.
\S10:233  Mur
\N5 All four are now in position. They will not
move from where they now are until they f+ind
a formula, a \istatus\r \iquo\r agreeable to all.
\S10:233  Mur
\N8 "[My dear Mrs\. Murphy,"] said Neary in a
voice dripping with solicitude.
\S10:233  Mur
\N10 "[If one of you would tell me simply what
you want,"] said Celia. "[I cannot keep up
with f+ine words."]
\S10:233  Mur
\N13 When Neary had f+inished it was dark in the
room. Simplicity is as slow as a hearse and as
long as a last breakfast.
\S10:233  Mur
\N16 "[Errors and omissions excepted,"] said Miss
Counihan.
\S10:233  Mur
\N19 Wylie's eyes began to pain him.
\S10:233  Mur
\N20 "[I am a prostitute,"] began Celia, speaking
from where she lay, and when she had f+inished
it was night in the room, that black night so
rich in acoustic properties, and on the landing,
to the inf+inite satisfaction of Miss Carridge.
\S10:233  Mur
\N24 "[You poor thing,"] said Miss Counihan, "[how
you must have suffered."]
\S10:233  Mur
\N26 "[Shall I put on the light?"] said Wylie, his
ravenous eyes in torment.
\S10:233  Mur
\N28 "[If you do I shall close my eyes,"] said Miss
\P10:234  Mur
\N1 Counihan. "[It is only in the dark that one
can meet."]
\S10:234  Mur
\N3 Few ditches were deeper than Miss Counihan,
the widow woman's cruse was not more receptive.
But Celia had not spoken and Wylie was raising
his arm when the calm voice resumed its fall,
no less slowly than before, but perhaps less surely.
He withheld his hand, the little temporary gent
and pure in heart.
\S10:234  Mur
\N10 "[At f+irst I thought I had lost him because
I could not take him as he was. Now I do
not f+latter myself."]
\S10:234  Mur
\N13 A rest.
\S10:234  Mur
\N14 "[I was a piece out of him that he could not
go on without, no matter what I did."]
\S10:234  Mur
\N16 A rest.
\S10:234  Mur
\N17 "[He had to leave me to be what he was before
he met me, only worse, or better, no matter what
I did."]
\S10:234  Mur
\N20 A long rest.
\S10:234  Mur
\N21 "[I was the last exile."]
\S10:234  Mur
\N22 A rest.
\S10:234  Mur
\N23 "[The last, if we are lucky."]
\S10:234  Mur
\N24 So love is wont to end, in protasis, if it be love.
\S10:234  Mur
\N25 From where he sat Wylie switched on the
light, the high dim yellow glim that Murphy,
a strict non-reader, had installed, and glutted his
eyes. While Miss Counihan on the contrary closed
\P10:235  Mur
\N1 hers with an ostentation that f+lattened her face,
to show that when she said a thing she meant it.
\S10:235  Mur
\N3 "[I cannot believe he has left you,"] said Wylie.
\S10:235  Mur
\N4 "[He will come back,"] said Neary.
\S10:235  Mur
\N5 "[We shall be here to receive him,"] said Miss
Counihan.
\S10:235  Mur
\N7 Her cot had a high rail all the way round.
Mr\. Willoughby Kelly came, smelling strongly
of drink, knelt, grasped the bars and looked
at her through them. Then she envied him,
and he her. Sometimes he sang.
\S10:235  Mur
\N12 "[Neary and I upstairs,"] said Wylie.
\S10:235  Mur
\N13 "[I here with you,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S10:235  Mur
\N14 "[Call the woman,"] said Neary.
\S10:235  Mur
\N15 Sometimes he sang:
\S10:235  Mur
\N16 \iWeep\r \inot\r, \imy\r \iwanton\r, \ismile\r \iupon\r \imy\r \iknee\r, \/
\iWhen\r \ithou\r \iart\r \iold\r, \ithere's\r \igrief\r \ienough\r \ifor\r \ithee\r,
\S10:235  Mur
\N18 etc\. Other times:
\S10:235  Mur
\N19 \iLove\r \iis\r \ia\r \iprick\r, \ilove\r \iis\r \ia\r \isting\r, \/
\iLove\r \iis\r \ia\r \ipretty\r \ipretty\r \ithing\r,
\S10:235  Mur
\N21 etc\. Other times, other songs. But most times
he did not sing at all.
\S10:235  Mur
\N23 "[She is at hand,"] said Wylie, "[and has
been for some little time, unless there is a real
goat in the house as well."]
\S10:235  Mur
\N26 It was Sunday, October the 20th, Murphy's
night of duty had come. So all things limp
together for the only possible.
\L11:236  Mur
\N1 LATE that afternoon, after many fruitless hours
in the chair, it would be just about the time Celia
was telling her story, M\.M\.M\. stood suddenly
for music, MUSIC, MUSIC, in brilliant, brevier and
canon, or some such typographical scream, if the
gentle compositor would be so friendly. Murphy
interpreted this in his favour, for he had seldom
been in such need of encouragement.
\S11:236  Mur
\N9 But in the night of Skinner's House, walking
round and round at the foot of the cross among
the shrouded instruments of recreation, having
done one round and marking the prescribed
pause of ten minutes before the next, he felt the
gulf between him and them more strongly than
at any time during his week of day duty. He
felt it was very likely with them that craved to
cross it as with them that dreaded to-+-they
never did.
\S11:236  Mur
\N19 A round took ten minutes, all being well. If
all was not well, if a patient had cut his throat,
or required attention, then the extra time taken
\P11:237  Mur
\N1 by the round was levied on the pause. For it
was an inf+lexible rule of the M\.M\.M\., laid down
in terms so strong as to be almost abusive, that
every patient, and not merely those on parchment
(or on caution), should be visited at regular
intervals of not more than twenty minutes
throughout the night. If things were so bad that
the round took ten minutes longer than it should,
then there was no pause and all was in order.
But if things were still worse and the round took
eleven minutes longer than it should, and as less
than no pause was unfortunately beyond the
powers of even the smartest attendant, then the
painful fact had simply to be faced once more,
that man proposed, but God disposed, even in
the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat.
\S11:237  Mur
\N17 The incidence of this higher law might have
been reduced by the introduction at night of an
emergency runner. But this would have run the
Mercyseat into close on a pound a week, supposing
the mug could have been found.
\S11:237  Mur
\N22 A clean round, facetiously called a "[virgin"],
was simplicity itself. The nurse had merely to
depress a switch before each door, f+looding the
cell with light of such ferocity that the eyes of
the sleeping and waking opened and closed
respectively, satisfy himself with a glance through
the judas that the patient looked good for another
\P11:238  Mur
\N1 twenty minutes, switch off the light, press the
indicator and pass.
\S11:238  Mur
\N3 The indicator was most ingenious. The indicator
recorded the visit, together with the hours,
minutes and seconds at which it was paid, on a
switchboard in Bom's apartment. The indicator
would have been still more ingenious if it had
been activated by the light switch, or even by
the judas shutter. For many and many were the
visits recorded for Bom's inspection, and never
paid, by nurses who were tired or indolent or
sensitive or fed up or malicious or behind time
or unwilling to shatter a patient's repose.
\S11:238  Mur
\N14 Bom was what is vulgarly called a sadist and
encouraged what is vulgarly called sadism in his
assistants. If during the day this energy could
not be discharged with any great freedom even
on those patients who submitted to it as part and
parcel of the therapeutic voodoo, with still less
freedom could it be discharged on those who
regarded it as \ihors\r \id'o+euvre\r. These latter were
reported to the R\.M\.S\. as "[uncooperative"],
"[not cooperating in the routine of the wards"]
or, in extreme cases, "[resistive"]. They were
liable to get hell at night.
\S11:238  Mur
\N26 Murphy's f+irst round had shown him what a
mere phrase was Neary's "[Sleep and Insomnia,
the Phidias and Scopas of Fatigue"]. It might
\P11:239  Mur
\N1 have held good in the dormitory of a young
ladies' academy, where quite possibly also it had
been inspired, but it had no sense in the wards
of the M\.M\.M\. Here those that slept and those
that did not were quite palpably by the same
hand, that of some rather later artist whose work
could by no means have come down to us, say
the Pergamene Barlach. And in his efforts to
distinguish between the two groups Murphy was
reminded of a wild waning winter afternoon in
Toulon before the \iho+^tel\r \ide\r \iville\r and Puget's
caryatids of Strength and Weariness, and the
tattered sky blackening above his perplexity as
to which was which.
\S11:239  Mur
\N15 Those that slept did so in the frozen attitudes
of Herculaneum, as though sleep had pounced
upon them like an act of God. And those that
did not did not by the obvious grace of the same
authority. The contortions of the resistive in
particular seemed to Murphy not so much an
entreaty to nature's soft nurse as a recoil from
her solicitations. The economy of care was
better served, in the experience of the resistive,
when they knit up the sleave by day.
\S11:239  Mur
\N25 By day he had not felt the gulf so painfully
as he did now, walking round and round the
wreck. By day there was Bom and other staff,
there were the doctors and the visitors, to
\P11:240  Mur
\N1 stimulate his sense of kindred with the patients.
There were the patients themselves, circulating
through the wards and in the gardens. He could
mix with them, touch them, speak to them, watch
them, imagine himself one of them. But in the
night of Skinner's there were none of these adminicles,
no loathing to love from, no kick from the
world that was not his, no illusion of caress from
the world that might be. It was as though the
microcosmopolitans had locked him out. No
sound reached him from the adjacent female
wards but the inf+inite variety of those made by
the female wardees, a faint blurred mockery,
from which however as the night wore on a
number of leading motifs emerged. Ditto for
the male wards below. The cackle of a nightingale
would have been most welcome, to explode
his spirit towards its nightingaleless night. But
the season seemed over.
\S11:240  Mur
\N20 In short there was nothing but he, the unintelligible
gulf and they. That was all. All.
ALL.
\S11:240  Mur
\N23 It was therefore with a heavy heart that he set
out on round two. The f+irst cell to be revisited,
that at the south-westernmost corner of the nave,
contained Mr\. Endon, voted by one and all the
most biddable little gaga in the entire institution,
his preoccupation with apno+ea notwithstanding.
\P11:241  Mur
\N1 Murphy switched on the thousand candles, shot
back the judas shutter and looked in. A strange
sight met his eye.
\S11:241  Mur
\N4 Mr\. Endon, an impeccable and brilliant
f+igurine in his scarlet gown, his crest a gush of
vivid white against the black shag, squatted
tailor-fashion on the head of his bed, holding his
left foot in his right hand and in his left hand
his right foot. The purple poulaines were on his
feet and the rings were on his f+ingers. The light
spurted off Mr\. Endon north, south, east, west
and in f+ifty-six other directions. The sheet
stretched away before him, as smooth and taut
as a groaning wife's belly, and on it a game of
chess was set up. The little blue and olive face,
wearing an expression of winsome f+iat, was upturned
to the judas.
\S11:241  Mur
\N18 Murphy resumed his round, gratif+ied in no
small measure. Mr\. Endon had recognised the
feel of his friend's eye upon him and made his
preparations accordingly. Friend's eye? Say
rather, Murphy's eye. Mr\. Endon had felt
Murphy's eye upon him. Mr\. Endon would
have been less than Mr\. Endon if he had known
what it was to have a friend; and Murphy more
than Murphy if he had not hoped against his
better judgment that his feeling for Mr\. Endon
was in some small degree reciprocated. Whereas
\P11:242  Mur
\N1 the sad truth was, that while Mr\. Endon for
Murphy was no less than bliss, Murphy for Mr\.
Endon was no more than chess. Murphy's eye?
Say rather, the chessy eye. Mr\. Endon had
vibrated to the chessy eye upon him and made
his preparations accordingly.
\S11:242  Mur
\N7 Murphy completed his round, an Irish virgin.
(Finished on time a round was called a virgin;
ahead of time, an Irish virgin.) The hypomanic
it is true, in pad since morning with a big attack
blowing up, had tried to come at his tormentor
through the judas. This distressed Murphy,
though he rather disliked the hypomanic. But
it did not delay him. Quite the reverse.
\S11:242  Mur
\N15 He hastened back westward down the nave
with his master key at the ready. He stopped
short of the wreck, switched on Mr\. Endon's
light and entered bodily into his cell. Mr\.
Endon was in the same position all but his head,
which was now bowed, whether over the board
or merely on his chest it was hard to say. Murphy
sank down on his elbow on the foot of the bed
and the game began.
\S11:242  Mur
\N24 Murphy's functions were scarcely affected by
this break with the tradition of night duty. All
it meant was that he took his pauses with Mr\.
Endon instead of in the wreck. Every ten
minutes he left the cell, pressed the indicator
\P11:243  Mur
\N1 with heartfelt conviction and did a round.
Every ten minutes and sometimes even sooner,
for never in the history of the M\.M\.M\. had there
been such a run of virgins and Irish virgins as on
this Murphy's maiden night, he returned to the
cell and resumed the game. Sometimes an entire
pause would pass without any change having
been made in the position; and at other times
the board would be in an uproar, a torrent of
moves.
\S11:243  Mur
\N11 The game, an Endon's Affence, or \iZweispringerspott\r,
was as follows:
\S11:243  Mur
\N13 \iWhite\r (MURPHY) \B\B \B \B \iBlack\r (MR\R\.\r ENDON) (\ia\r)
\S11:243  Mur
\N14 1. P-+-K4 (\ib\r) \B \B \B \B \B \B 1. Kt-+-KR3
\S11:243  Mur
\N15 2. Kt-+-KR3 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 2. R-+-KKt1
\S11:243  Mur
\N16 3. R-+-KKt1 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 3. Kt-+-QB3
\S11:243  Mur
\N17 4. Kt-+-QB3 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 4. Kt-+-K4
\S11:243  Mur
\N18 5. Kt-+-Q5 (\ic\r) \B\B \B \B \B \B 5. R-+-KR1
\S11:243  Mur
\N19 6. R-+-KR1 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 6. Kt-+-QB3
\S11:243  Mur
\N20 7. Kt-+-QB3 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 7. Kt-+-KKt1
\S11:243  Mur
\N21 8. Kt-+-QKt1 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 8. Kt-+-QKt1 (\id\r)
\S11:243  Mur
\N22 9. Kt-+-KKt1 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 9. P-+-K3
\S11:243  Mur
\N23 10. P-+-KKt3 (\ie\r) \B\B \B \B \B 10. Kt-+-K2
\S11:243  Mur
\N24 11. Kt-+-K2 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 11. Kt-+-KKt3
\S11:243  Mur
\N25 12. P-+-KKt4 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 12. B-+-K2
\S11:243  Mur
\N26 13. Kt-+-KKt3 \B \B \B \B \B \B 13. P-+-Q3
\S11:243  Mur
\N27 14. B-+-K2 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 14. Q-+-Q2
\S11:243  Mur
\N28 15. P-+-Q3 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 15. K-+-Q1 (\if\r)
\S11:243  Mur
\N29 16. Q-+-Q2 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 16. Q-+-K1
\S11:243  Mur
\N30 17. K-+-Q1 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 17. Kt-+-Q2
\S11:243  Mur
\N31 18. Kt-+-QB3 (\ig\r) \B\B \B \B \B 18. R-+-QKt1
\S11:243  Mur
\N32 19. R-+-QKt1 \B\B \B \B \B \B \B 19. Kt-+-QKt3
\S11:243  Mur
\N33 20. Kt-+-QR4 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 20. B-+-Q2
\P11:244  Mur
\N1 21. P-+-QKt3 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 21. R-+-KKt1
\S11:244  Mur
\N2 22. R-+-KKt1 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 22. K-+-QB1 (\ih\r)
\S11:244  Mur
\N3 23. B-+-QKt2 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 23. Q-+-KB1
\S11:244  Mur
\N4 24. K-+-QB1 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 24. B-+-K1
\S11:244  Mur
\N5 25. B-+-QB3 (\ii\r) \B \B \B \B \B 25. Kt-+-KR1
\S11:244  Mur
\N6 26. P-+-QKt4 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 26. B-+-Q1
\S11:244  Mur
\N7 27. Q-+-KR6 (\ij\r) \B \B \B \B \B 27. Kt-+-QR1 (\ik\r)
\S11:244  Mur
\N8 28. Q-+-KB6 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 28. Kt-+-KKt3
\S11:244  Mur
\N9 29. B-+-K5 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 29. B-+-K2
\S11:244  Mur
\N10 30. Kt-+-QB5 (\il\r) \B\B \B \B \B 30. K-+-Q1 (\im\r)
\S11:244  Mur
\N11 31. Kt-+-KR1 (\in\r) \B\B \B \B \B 31. B-+-Q2
\S11:244  Mur
\N12 32. K-+-QKt2!! \B\B \B \B \B \B 32. R-+-KR1
\S11:244  Mur
\N13 33. K-+-QKt3 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 33. B-+-QB1
\S11:244  Mur
\N14 34. K-+-QR4 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 34. Q-+-K1 (\io\r)
\S11:244  Mur
\N15 35. K-+-R5 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 35. Kt-+-QKt3
\S11:244  Mur
\N16 36. B-+-KB4 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 36. Kt-+-Q2
\S11:244  Mur
\N17 37. Q-+-QB3 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 37. R-+-QR1
\S11:244  Mur
\N18 38. Kt-+-QR6 (\ip\r) \B\B \B \B \B 38. B-+-KB1
\S11:244  Mur
\N19 39. K-+-QKt5 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 39. Kt-+-K2
\S11:244  Mur
\N20 40. K-+-QR5 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 40. Kt-+-QKt1
\S11:244  Mur
\N21 41. Q-+-QB6 \B \B \B \B \B \B \B 41. Kt-+-KKt1
\S11:244  Mur
\N22 42. K-+-QKt5 \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 42. K-+-K2 (\iq\r)
\S11:244  Mur
\N23 43. K-+-R5 \B \B \B\B \B \B \B \B 43. Q-+-Q1 (\ir\r)
\S11:244  Mur
\N24 \iAnd\r \iWhite\r \isurrenders\r.
\S11:244  Mur
\N25 (\ia\r) Mr\. Endon always played Black. If presented with
White he would fade, without the least trace of
annoyance, away into a light stupor.
\S11:244  Mur
\N28 (\ib\r) The primary cause of all White's subsequent diff+iculties.
\S11:244  Mur
\N29 (\ic\r) Apparently nothing better, bad as this is.
\S11:244  Mur
\N30 (\id\r) An ingenious and beautiful de+'but, sometimes called
the Pipe-opener.
\S11:244  Mur
\N32 (\ie\r) Ill-judged.
\S11:244  Mur
\N33 (\if\r) Never seen in the Cafe+' de la Re+'gence, seldom in
Simpson's Divan.
\S11:244  Mur
\N35 (\ig\r) The f+lag of distress.
\S11:244  Mur
\N36 (\ih\r) Exquisitely played.
\P11:245  Mur
\S11:245  Mur
\N1 (\ii\r) It is diff+icult to imagine a more deplorable situation
than poor White's at this point.
\S11:245  Mur
\N3 (\ij\r) The ingenuity of despair.
\S11:245  Mur
\N4 (\ik\r) Black has now an irresistible game.
\S11:245  Mur
\N5 (\il\r) High praise is due to White for the pertinacity with
which he struggles to lose a piece.
\S11:245  Mur
\N7 (\im\r) At this point Mr\. Endon, without as much as
"[j'adoube"], turned his King and Queen's Rook
upside down, in which position they remained for
the rest of the game.
\S11:245  Mur
\N11 (\in\r) A \icoup\r \ide\r \irepos\r long overdue.
\S11:245  Mur
\N12 (\io\r) Mr\. Endon not crying "[Check!"], nor otherwise
giving the slightest indication that he was alive to
having attacked the King of his opponent, or rather
vis-a+`-vis, Murphy was absolved, in accordance with
Law 18, from attending to it. But this would have
been to admit that the salute was adventitious.
\S11:245  Mur
\N18 (\ip\r) No words can express the torment of mind that goaded
White to this abject offensive.
\S11:245  Mur
\N20 (\iq\r) The termination of this solitaire is very beautifully
played by Mr\. Endon.
\S11:245  Mur
\N22 (\ir\r) Further solicitation would be frivolous and vexatious,
and Murphy, with fool's mate in his soul, retires.
\S11:245  Mur
\N24 Following Mr\. Endon's forty-third move
Murphy gazed for a long time at the board before
laying his Shah on his side, and again for a long
time after that act of submission. But little by
little his eyes were captured by the brilliant
swallow-tail of Mr\. Endon's arms and legs,
purple, scarlet, black and glitter, till they saw
nothing else, and that in a short time only as a
vivid blur, Neary's big blooming buzzing confusion
or ground, mercifully free of f+igure.
\P11:246  Mur
\N1 Wearying soon of this he dropped his head on his
arms in the midst of the chessmen, which
scattered with a terrible noise. Mr\. Endon's
f+inery persisted for a little in an after-image
scarcely inferior to the original. Then this also
faded and Murphy began to see nothing, that
colourlessness which is such a rare postnatal treat,
being the absence (to abuse a nice distinction)
not of \ipercipere\r but of \ipercipi\r. His other senses
also found themselves at peace, an unexpected
pleasure. Not the numb peace of their own
suspension, but the positive peace that comes
when the somethings give way, or perhaps simply
add up, to the Nothing, than which in the guffaw
of the Abderite naught is more real. Time did
not cease, that would be asking too much, but
the wheel of rounds and pauses did, as Murphy
with his head among the armies continued to
suck in, through all the posterns of his withered
soul, the accidentless One-and-Only, conveniently
called Nothing. Then this also vanished, or perhaps
simply came asunder, in the familiar variety
of stenches, asperities, ear-splitters and eye-closers,
and Murphy saw that Mr\. Endon was missing.
\S11:246  Mur
\N25 For quite some little time Mr\. Endon had been
drifting about the corridors, pressing here a
light-switch and there an indicator, in a way that
seemed haphazard but was in fact determined
\P11:247  Mur
\N1 by an amental pattern as precise as any of those
that governed his chess. Murphy found him in
the south transept, gracefully stationed before
the hypomanic's pad, ringing the changes on the
various ways in which the indicator could be
pressed and the light turned on and off. Beginning
with the light turned off to begin with he
had: lit, indicated, extinguished; lit, extinguished,
indicated; indicated, lit, extinguished.
Continuing then with the light turned on to
begin with he had: extinguished, lit, indicated;
extinguished, indicated, lit; indicated, extinguished
and was seriously thinking of lighting
when Murphy stayed his hand.
\S11:247  Mur
\N15 The hypomanic bounced off the walls like a
bluebottle in a jar.
\S11:247  Mur
\N17 Bom's switchboard the following morning
informed him that the hypomanic had been
visited at regular intervals of ten minutes from
8 p\.m\. till shortly after 4 a\.m\., then for nearly
an hour not at all, then six times in the space
of one minute, then no more. This unprecedented
distribution of visits had a lasting effect
on Bom and continued to baff+le his ingenuity up
to and including the day of his death. He gave
it out that Murphy had gone mad, and even
went so far as to say that he was not surprised.
This went some way towards saving the credit
\P11:248  Mur
\N1 of his department, but none at all towards setting
his own mind at rest. And the Magdalen Mental
Mercyseat remembers Murphy to this day, with
pity, derision, contempt and a touch of awe, as
the male nurse that went mad with his colours
nailed to the mast. This affords him no consolation.
He is in no need of any.
\S11:248  Mur
\N8 Mr\. Endon went quietly, back to his cell. It
was of no consequence to Mr\. Endon that his
hand had been stayed from restoring his Shah
to his square, and the hypomanic's light from off
to on. It was a fragment of Mr\. Endon's good
fortune not to be at the mercy of the hand,
whether another's or his own.
\S11:248  Mur
\N15 Murphy put the men back into the box, took
off Mr\. Endon's gown and slippers and tucked
him up in bed. Mr\. Endon lay back and f+ixed
his eyes on some object immeasurably remote,
perhaps the famous ant on the sky of an airless
world. Murphy kneeled beside the bed, which
was a low one, took Mr\. Endon's head in his
hands and brought the eyes to bear on his, or
rather his on them, across a narrow gulf of air,
the merest hand's-breadth of air. Murphy had
often inspected Mr\. Endon's eyes, but never with
such close and prolonged attention as now.
\S11:248  Mur
\N27 In shape they were remarkable, being both
deep-set and protuberant, one of Nature's jokes
\P11:249  Mur
\N1 involving sockets so widely splayed that Mr\.
Endon's brows and cheekbones seemed to have
subsided. And in colour scarcely less so, having
almost none. For the whites, of which a sliver
appeared below the upper lid, were very large
indeed and the pupils prodigiously dilated, as
though by permanent excess of light. The iris
was reduced to a thin glaucous rim of spawnlike
consistency, so like a ballrace between the black
and white that these could have started to rotate
in opposite directions, or better still the same
direction, without causing Murphy the least
surprise. All four lids were everted in an
ectropion of great expressiveness, a mixture of
cunning, depravity and rapt attention. Approaching
his eyes still nearer Murphy could see
the red frills of mucus, a large point of suppuration
at the root of an upper lash, the f+iligree of veins
like the Lord's Prayer on a toenail and in the
cornea, horribly reduced, obscured and distorted,
his own image. They were all set,
Murphy and Mr\. Endon, for a butterf+ly kiss, if
that is still the correct expression.
\S11:249  Mur
\N24 Kneeling at the bedside, the hair starting in
thick black ridges between his f+ingers, his lips,
nose and forehead almost touching Mr\. Endon's,
seeing himself stigmatised in those eyes that did
not see him, Murphy heard words demanding so
\P11:250  Mur
\N1 strongly to be spoken that he spoke them, right
into Mr\. Endon's face, Murphy who did not
speak at all in the ordinary way unless spoken
to, and not always even then.
\S11:250  Mur
\N5 "[the last at last seen of him
himself unseen by him
and of himself"]
\S11:250  Mur
\N8 A rest.
\S11:250  Mur
\N9 "[The last Mr\. Murphy saw of Mr\. Endon was
Mr\. Murphy unseen by Mr\. Endon. This was
also the last Murphy saw of Murphy."]
\S11:250  Mur
\N12 A rest.
\S11:250  Mur
\N13 "[The relation between Mr\. Murphy and Mr\.
Endon could not have been better summed up
than by the former's sorrow at seeing himself in
the latter's immunity from seeing anything but
himself."]
\S11:250  Mur
\N18 A long rest.
\S11:250  Mur
\N19 "[Mr\. Murphy is a speck in Mr\. Endon's
unseen."]
\S11:250  Mur
\N21 That was the whole extent of the little aff+latulence.
He replaced Mr\. Endon's head f+irmly on
the pillow, rose from his knees, left the cell, and
the building, without reluctance and without
relief.
\S11:250  Mur
\N26 In contrast with the foredawn which was pitch
black, cold and damp, Murphy felt incandescent.
An hour previously the moon had been obliged
\P11:251  Mur
\N1 to set, and the sun could not rise for an hour to
come. He raised his face to the starless sky,
abandoned, patient, the sky, not the face, which
was abandoned only. He took off his shoes and
socks and threw them away. He set off slowly,
trailing his feet, through the long grass among
the trees towards the male nurses' quarters. He
took off his clothes one by one as he went, quite
forgetting they did not belong to him, and threw
them away. When he was naked he lay down
in a tuft of soaking tuffets and tried to get a
picture of Celia. In vain. Of his mother. In
vain. Of his father (for he was not illegitimate).
In vain. It was usual for him to fail with his
mother; and usual, though less usual, for him
to fail with a woman. But never before had he
failed with his father. He saw the clenched
f+ists and rigid upturned face of the Child in a
Giovanni Bellini Circumcision, waiting to feel
the knife. He saw eyeballs being scraped, f+irst
any eyeballs, then Mr\. Endon's. He tried again
with his father, his mother, Celia, Wylie, Neary,
Cooper, Miss Dew, Miss Carridge, Nelly, the
sheep, the chandlers, even Bom and Co\., even Bim,
even Ticklepenny and Miss Counihan, even Mr\.
Quigley. He tried with the men, women, children
and animals that belong to even worse stories
than this. In vain in all cases. He could not
\P11:252  Mur
\N1 get a picture in his mind of any creature he had
met, animal or human. Scraps of bodies, of
landscapes, hands, eyes, lines and colours evoking
nothing, rose and climbed out of sight before
him, as though reeled upward off a spool level
with his throat. It was his experience that this
should be stopped, whenever possible, before the
deeper coils were reached. He rose and hastened
to the garret, running till he was out of breath,
then walking, then running again, and so on.
He drew up the ladder, lit the dip sconced in its
own grease on the f+loor and tied himself up in
the chair, dimly intending to have a short rock
and then, if he felt any better, to dress and go,
before the day staff were about, leaving Ticklepenny
to face the music, MUSIC, MUSIC, back to
Brewery Road, to Celia, serenade, nocturne,
albada. Dimly, very dimly. He pushed off. A
phrase from Suk joined in the rhythm. "[The
square of Moon and Solar Orb aff+licts the Hyleg.
Herschel in Aquarius stops the water."] At one
of the rock's dead points he saw, for a second,
far beneath, the dip and radiator, gleam and
grin; at the other the skylight, open to no stars.
Slowly he felt better, astir in his mind, in the
freedom of that light and dark that did not clash,
nor alternate, nor fade nor lighten except to
their communion. The rock got faster and faster,
\P11:253  Mur
\N1 shorter and shorter, the gleam was gone, the grin
was gone, the starlessness was gone, soon his body
would be quiet. Most things under the moon
got slower and slower and then stopped, a rock
got faster and faster and then stopped. Soon
his body would be quiet, soon he would be free.
\S11:253  Mur
\N7 The gas went on in the w\.c\., excellent gas,
superf+ine chaos.
\S11:253  Mur
\N9 Soon his body was quiet.
\L12:254  Mur
\N1 FORENOON, Wednesday, October the 23rd. Not
a cloud left in the sky.
\S12:254  Mur
\N3 Cooper sat-+-\isat\r!-+-beside the driver, Wylie
between Celia and Miss Counihan, Neary on
one bracket-seat with his legs on the other and
his back against the door, a very perilous position
for Neary. Neary considered himself better
off than Wylie because he could see Celia's face,
which was turned to the window. And Wylie
considered himself better off than Neary, especially
when they came to a cobbled surface
or turned a corner. Faces held up Neary a
little longer than they did Wylie.
\S12:254  Mur
\N14 Miss Counihan's face was also turned to the
window, but in vain, as she read there unmistakably.
This did not greatly trouble her.
They would never get any more than they
were getting now, which she did not do them
the credit of assessing at a very large amount.
Indeed, they would never again get as much
as the little that would shortly be withdrawn.
\P12:255  Mur
\N1 Then they would come ramping to her
again.
\S12:255  Mur
\N3 Miss Counihan could think ill of her partners,
past, present and prospective, without prejudice
to herself. This is a faculty that no young man
or woman, stepping down into the sexpit,
should be without.
\S12:255  Mur
\N8 For all except Celia, whose affective mechanisms
seemed to be arrested, it was like being
in the chief mourners' cab, so strong was the
feeling of getaway. Indeed, Brewery Road had
become intolerable. The old endless chain of
love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust.
\S12:255  Mur
\N14 Miss Counihan would not have minded going
up to Wylie if Celia had not minded Neary coming
down to her. Nor would Wylie have objected
in the least to going down to Celia if Miss
Counihan had not objected most strongly to
going up to Neary. Nor would Neary have
been less than delighted to go down to either,
or have either come up to him, if both had not
been more than averse to his attentions, whether
on the f+irst f+loor or the second.
\S12:255  Mur
\N24 Accordingly Celia and Miss Counihan continued
to share the bed in the big room, the
latter shedding lights on Murphy that were
no credit to herself and no news to the former;
and Neary and Wylie to take spells in the bed
\P12:256  Mur
\N1 in the old boy's room, each evoking Celia
according to his disposition.
\S12:256  Mur
\N3 So Neary and Celia cease slowly to need
Murphy. He, that he may need her; she,
that she may rest from need.
\S12:256  Mur
\N6 To cap all Cooper was given a shakedown
in the kitchen. Through the keyhole Miss
Carridge watched him, settling down for the
night in his socks, moleskins, shirt and hat.
A dull coucher for Miss Carridge.
\S12:256  Mur
\N11 For two days and three nights they did not leave
the house. Neary, because distrusting his associates
singly and as a pair he feared lest Murphy
should arrive while he was absent; Wylie and
Miss Counihan, for the same reason; Cooper,
because he was forbidden; Celia, because it
did not occur to her; Miss Carridge, because
she had no time. It seemed as though none
of them would ever go out again, when relief
arrived in the shape of an assurance from Dr\.
Angus Killiecrankie that so far as the fear of
missing Murphy was concerned, they might all
take the air without the least anxiety.
\S12:256  Mur
\N24 Nothing was said on the way down. For
the little they knew of the little they felt could
with no more propriety be acknowledged than
denied. Celia leaning back with her face to
the window was aware only of all the colours
\P12:257  Mur
\N1 of light streaming back into the past and the
seat thrusting her forward. Miss Counihan
pressed her bosom with vague relish against
the lesser of two evils that had befallen her. So
long as she had not lost Murphy thus beyond
recall, the risk subsisted of his setting her simply
aside without more, which would have been
bad, or in favour of Celia, which would have
been awful, or of some other slut, which would
have been pretty bad also. In a somewhat
similar way Neary, for whom the sight of Celia
had restored Murphy from being an end in
himself to his initial condition of obstacle (or
key), had cause to be pleased with the turn
events had taken. And to Wylie, between jolts
and corners, the only phrase to propose itself
was: "[Didn't I tell you she would lead us
to him?"] But politeness and candour run
together, when one is not f+itting neither is the
other. Then the occasion calls for silence, that
frail partition between the ill-concealed and the
ill-revealed, the clumsily false and the unavoidably
so.
\S12:257  Mur
\N24 They were received at the Mercyseat by Dr\.
Angus Killiecrankie, the Outer Hebridean
R\.M\.S\., an eminescent home county authority
and devout Mottist. He was a large, bony,
stooping, ruddy man, bluff but morose, with
\P12:258  Mur
\N1 an antiquary's cowl whiskers, mottled market-gardener's
hands thickly overlaid with pink
lanugo, and eyes red with straining for degenerative
changes. He tucked up his whiskers and
said:
\S12:258  Mur
\N6 "[Mrs\. Murrphy?"]
\S12:258  Mur
\N7 "[I fear we were just his very dear friends,"]
said Miss Counihan.
\S12:258  Mur
\N9 Dr\. Killiecrankie drew a singed envelope from
his pocket and held it up with the air of a
conjuror displaying the ace. It bore the name
Mrs\. Murphy and the address in Brewery
Road, pencilled in laborious capitals.
\S12:258  Mur
\N14 "[This was all we had to go on,"] he said.
"[If he had any other papers, they were consoomed."]
\S12:258  Mur
\N17 Neary, Wylie and Miss Counihan f+lung out
their hands with one accord.
\S12:258  Mur
\N19 "[I'll see she gets it,"] said Neary.
\S12:258  Mur
\N20 "[Without fail,"] said Wylie.
\S12:258  Mur
\N21 "[His very dear friends,"] said Miss Counihan.
\S12:258  Mur
\N22 Dr\. Killiecrankie put up the envelope and led
the way.
\S12:258  Mur
\N24 The mortuary was at its bungaloidest, the
traveller's joy gleamed wanly with its pale old
wood, the scarlet ampelopsis quenched the
brick. Bim and Ticklepenny were sitting cheek
by jowl on the dazzling granite step, and out
\P12:259  Mur
\N1 in the middle of the forecourt of lawn a short
but willowy male f+igure, dressed wearily in
black and striped, his lithe bowler laid crown
downwards on the grass beside him, was making
violent golf+ing movements with his umbrella.
Appearances were not deceptive, it was the county
coroner.
\S12:259  Mur
\N8 They entered the mortuary, when the little
duel between R\.M\.S\. and coroner as to which
would pass second had been amicably settled
without dishonour, in the following order:
R\.M\.S\. and coroner, twined together; Neary;
Miss Counihan; Celia; Wylie; Cooper;
Ticklepenny and Bim, wreathed together. They
proceeded directly along a short passage, f+lanked
on either hand with immense double-decker
refrigerators, six in all, to the post-mortem
room, a sudden lancination of white and silver,
to the north an unbroken bay of glass frosted
to a height of f+ive feet from the f+loor and reaching
to the ceiling. Outside the horns of yew
had the hopeless harbour-mouth look, the
arms of two that can reach no further, or of one
in supplication, the patient impotence of charity
or prayer.
\S12:259  Mur
\N26 Bim and Ticklepenny paused in the passage
to collect Murphy. They slid him out on his
aluminium tray, they carried him into the p\.m\.
\P12:260  Mur
\N1 room, they laid him out on the slab of ruin
marble in the key of the bay. In the narrow
space to the north of the slab Dr\. Killiecrankie
and the coroner took up the demonstrative
attitude. Bim and Ticklepenny awaited the
signal at the head and foot of the tray, the
four corners of the sheet gathered in their hands.
The rest drooped in a crescent near the door.
Celia watched a brown stain on the shroud
where the iron had scorched it. Wylie supported
Miss Counihan, mistress of the graded
swoon, who closed her eyes and murmured,
"[Tell me when to look."] Neary remarking
with a shock that Cooper had taken off his hat
and that his head was apparently quite normal,
except that the hair was perhaps rather more
abundant than is usual in men of Cooper's age,
and horribly matted, suddenly realised that
Cooper had sat all the way from Brewery
Road.
\S12:260  Mur
\N21 "[These remains,"] said the coroner in his
nancy soprano, "[were deposited just within
my county, my county, I am most heartily
sorry to say. Another long putt and I would
be sinking them now."]
\S12:260  Mur
\N26 He closed his eyes and struck a long putt.
The ball left the club with the sweet sound of
a f+lute, f+lowed across the green, struck the back
\P12:261  Mur
\N1 of the tin, spouted a foot into the air, fell plumb
into the hole, bubbled and was still. He sighed
and hurried on:
\S12:261  Mur
\N4 "[My function perhaps it is part of my duty
to inform you is to determine, one, who is
dead, and, two, how. With regard to the latter
matter, the latter matter, happily it need not
detain us, thanks to the, how shall I say-+--+-?"]
\S12:261  Mur
\N9 "[The irrefragable post-mortem appearance,"]
said Dr\. Killiecrankie. "[Mr\. Clinch, please."]
\S12:261  Mur
\N11 Bim and Ticklepenny lifted the sheet. Celia
started forward.
\S12:261  Mur
\N13 "[One moment,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
"[Thank you, Mr\. Clinch."]
\S12:261  Mur
\N15 Bim and Ticklepenny lowered the sheet.
Celia remained standing a little in advance
of the others.
\S12:261  Mur
\N18 "[I say shock following burns,"] said the
coroner, "[without the slightest hesitation."]
\S12:261  Mur
\N20 "[Not the slightest,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:261  Mur
\N21 "[Death by burns,"] said the coroner, "[perhaps
I am expected to add, is a wholly unscientif+ic
condition. Burns always shocks, I beg your
pardon, my dear Angus, always shock, sometimes
more, sometimes less, according to their
strength, their locus and the shockability of the
burner. The same is true of scalds."]
\S12:261  Mur
\N28 "[Sepsis does not arise,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\P12:262  Mur
\S12:262  Mur
\N1 "[My physiology is rather rusty,"] said the
coroner, "[but no doubt it was not required."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N3 "[We arrived too late for sepsis to arise,"] said
Dr\. Killiecrankie. "[The shock was ample."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N5 "[Then suppose we say severe shock following
burns,"] said the coroner, "[to be absolutely clear."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N7 "[Yes,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie, "[or severe
shock following severe burrrns. I do not think
that is too strong."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N10 "[By all means,"] said the coroner, "[severe
burns let it be, followed by severe shock. So
much for the \imodus\r \imorendi\r, the \imodus\r \imorendi\r."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N13 "[An accident?"] said Neary.
\S12:262  Mur
\N14 The coroner stood quite still for a moment
with the stupef+ied, almost idiot, expression of
one who is not quite sure if a joke has been
made, nor, if so, in what it consists. Then he
said:
\S12:262  Mur
\N19 "[I beg your pardon."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N20 Neary repeated his question, on a rising
note. The coroner opened and closed his mouth
a number of times, threw up his arms and turned
aside. But words never failed Dr\. Killiecrankie,
that for him would have been tantamount to
loose thinking, so up went the whiskers.
\S12:262  Mur
\N26 "[A classical case of misadventure."]
\S12:262  Mur
\N27 Unromantic to the last, thought Miss Counihan.
She had taken out her leaving certif+icate.
\P12:263  Mur
\S12:263  Mur
\N1 "[Before we get completely out of our depth,"]
said the coroner, "[perhaps there is something
else the gentleman here would like to know.
Whether for example it was a Brymay safety
that exploded the mixture, or a wax vesta.
Such poor lights as I possess are his to extinguish."]
\S12:263  Mur
\N7 Neary attended to his nose with studied insolence.
Wylie felt proud of his acquaintance,
for the f+irst time.
\S12:263  Mur
\N10 "[Then perhaps I may venture to proceed,"]
said the coroner, "[to the other matter, the
identity of the ac--\Tthe deceased. Here I need
hardly say we f+ind ourselves embarrassed by
that very feature of the-+-the-+-"]
\S12:263  Mur
\N15 "[Tragic occurrence,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:263  Mur
\N16 "[Very feature of the tragic occurrence that
stood us in such good stead in the matter of
the manner of death. The matter of the manner
of death. Still we must not complain. What
does the poet say, Angus, perhaps you remember?"]
\S12:263  Mur
\N22 "[What poet?"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:263  Mur
\N23 "[\`Never the rose without the thorn\',"] said
the coroner. "[I quote from memory, bitter
memory."]
\S12:263  Mur
\N26 "[Mr\. Clinch, please,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:263  Mur
\N27 Bim and Ticklepenny reached forward with
their corners, Bim received the shroud in folio,
\P12:264  Mur
\N1 converted it deftly into octavo, and both stood
back. The very dear friends moved up to the
slab, Celia in the centre and still a little to
the fore.
\S12:264  Mur
\N5 "[By all accounts,"] said the coroner, "[if I
may say so without prejudice, it was a person
abounding in distinctive marks, both mental
and physical. But-+--+-"]
\S12:264  Mur
\N9 "[You forget the moral,"] sneered Dr\. Killiecrankie,
"[and the spiritual, or as some say,
functional."]
\S12:264  Mur
\N12 "[But whether-+--+-"]
\S12:264  Mur
\N13 "[Remarkable for the pertinacity,"] said Dr\.
Killiecrankie, "[with which they elude the
closest autopsy."]
\S12:264  Mur
\N16 "[But whether any of these have survived the
conf+lagration,"] continued the coroner, "[is a
question that I for one, and I should imagine
all those who were not of the inner circle, cannot
presume to decide. It is here that you may
help us."]
\S12:264  Mur
\N22 Such a silence followed these words that the
faint hum of the refrigerators could be heard.
The eyes of all, seventeen in all, strayed and
mingled among the remains.
\S12:264  Mur
\N26 How various are the ways of looking away!
Bim and Ticklepenny raised their heads together,
their eyes met in a look both tender and
\P12:265  Mur
\N1 ardent, they were alive and well and had each
other. Dr\. Killiecrankie slowly sunk his head,
till he was nothing but legs, skull and whiskers.
He owed not a little of his reputation to this
gift of seeming to brood when in fact his mind
was entirely blank. The coroner did not move
his head, he simply let go the focus and ceased
to see. Neary and Wylie diverted their attention
calmly to other things, the appointments of the
room, beyond the glass the bright green and
the dark green, leaning on the blue of heaven.
The disclaimer was evident. One rapid glance
from his solitary eye was enough for Cooper,
whom the least little thing upset. Miss Counihan
looked away and back, away and back, surprised
and pleased to f+ind she was of such stern stuff,
annoyed that no trace remained of what she
had known, chagrined that she could not
exclaim, before them all, pointing to her
justif+ication: "[This is Murphy, whose very
dear friend I was."] Celia alone seemed capable
of giving her undivided attention to the matter
in hand, her eyes continued to move patiently,
gravely and intently among the remains long
after the others had ceased to look, long after
Miss Counihan herself had despaired of establishing
the closeness of her acquaintance.
\S12:265  Mur
\N28 From his dream of pins split and bunkers
\P12:266  Mur
\N1 set at nought the coroner came to with a start
and said:
\S12:266  Mur
\N3 "[Any luck?"]
\S12:266  Mur
\N4 "[Could you turn him over?"] said Celia, her
f+irst words for fully sixty hours, her f+irst request
for longer than she could have remembered.
\S12:266  Mur
\N7 "[By all means,"] said the coroner, "[though
I fancy you have seen the best of him."]
\S12:266  Mur
\N9 "[Mr\. Clinch,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:266  Mur
\N10 The remains having been turned over, Celia
addressed herself with a suddenly conf+ident
air to the further of the charred buttocks and
found at once what she sought. She put her
f+inger lightly on the spot and said:
\S12:266  Mur
\N15 "[Here he had a big birthmark."]
\S12:266  Mur
\N16 Coroner and R\.M\.S\. pounced on the f+ind.
\S12:266  Mur
\N17 "[Beyond the slightest doubt,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie,
"[an extensive capillary angioma of
most unusual situation."]
\S12:266  Mur
\N20 "[A proper port-winer,"] said the coroner.
"[The afterglow is unmistakable."]
\S12:266  Mur
\N22 Miss Counihan burst into tears.
\S12:266  Mur
\N23 "[I knew of no such mark,"] she cried, "[I
don't believe he ever had a horrid mark like
that, I don't believe it's my Murphy at all, it
doesn't look at \iall\r like him, I don't believe-+--+-"]
\S12:266  Mur
\N27 "[There there,"] said Neary. "[There there.
There there."]
\P12:267  Mur
\S12:267  Mur
\N1 "[How beautiful in a way,"] said the coroner,
"[birthmark deathmark, I mean, rounding off
the life somehow, don't you think, full circle,
\iyou\r know, eh, Angus?"]
\S12:267  Mur
\N5 "[There there,"] said Neary. "[No man is
without blemish."]
\S12:267  Mur
\N7 "[Well,"] said the coroner, "[now that we
know who is dead, who is?"]
\S12:267  Mur
\N9 "[Mr\. Murphy,"] said Neary, "[native of the
city of Dublin."]
\S12:267  Mur
\N11 "[Dear old indelible Dublin,"] said the coroner.
"[Our only female link passed peacefully away
in the Coombe, a month and a half before her
time, under the second George. Christian name.
Next-of-kin."]
\S12:267  Mur
\N16 "[None,"] said Neary. "[A Dutch uncle."]
\S12:267  Mur
\N17 "[Who the devil are you?"] said the coroner.
\S12:267  Mur
\N18 "[His very dear friends,"] said Miss Counihan.
"[His dearest friends."]
\S12:267  Mur
\N20 "[How often have you to be told?"] said Wylie.
\S12:267  Mur
\N21 "[Was it to Murphy he answered,"] said the
coroner, "[or only to Mr\. Murphy?"]
\S12:267  Mur
\N23 "[Mr\. Clinch,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:267  Mur
\N24 They covered the tray and carried it out
to the refrigerators. Neary saw Clonmachnois
on the slab, the castle of the O'Melaghlins,
meadow, eskers, thatch on white, something
red, the wide bright water, Connaught.
\P12:268  Mur
\S12:268  Mur
\N1 "[And this young lady,"] said the coroner,
"[who knew him in such detail, such opportune
detail-+--+-"]
\S12:268  Mur
\N4 "[Miss Celia Kelly,"] said Neary.
\S12:268  Mur
\N5 "[Did Miss Kelly murmur Murphy,"] said
the coroner, "[or Mr\. Murphy?"]
\S12:268  Mur
\N7 "[Damn you and blast you,"] said Neary, "[the
man was unbaptised. What the bloody hell
more do you want?"]
\S12:268  Mur
\N10 "[And this Mrs\. Murrrphy,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie,
"[who was she? The Dutch uncle?"]
\S12:268  Mur
\N12 "[There is no Mrs\. Murphy,"] said Neary.
\S12:268  Mur
\N13 "[An epigram,"] said the coroner, "[has been
attempted."]
\S12:268  Mur
\N15 "[Miss Kelly would have been Mrs\. Murphy,"]
said Neary, "[if Mr\. Murphy had been spared
a little longer."]
\S12:268  Mur
\N18 "[One would have thought so,"] said the
coroner.
\S12:268  Mur
\N20 Cooper and Wylie supported Miss Counihan.
\S12:268  Mur
\N21 "[No,"] said Celia.
\S12:268  Mur
\N22 With a bow Dr\. Killiecrankie handed the
letter to Celia, who handed it to Neary, who
opened it, read, reread, hesitated, read again
and said at last:
\S12:268  Mur
\N26 "[With Miss Kelly's permission .+.+."]
\S12:268  Mur
\N27 "[Is there anything more?"] said Celia. "[I
should like to go."]
\P12:269  Mur
\S12:269  Mur
\N1 "[This may concern you,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie,
"[since it appears to be addressed to
you."]
\S12:269  Mur
\N4 Neary read out:
\S12:269  Mur
\N5 "[With regard to the disposal of these my body,
mind and soul, I desire that they be burnt and
placed in a paper bag and brought to the Abbey
Theatre, Lr\. Abbey Street, Dublin, and without pause
into what the great and good Lord Chesterf+ield calls
the necessary house, where their happiest hours have
been spent, on the right as one goes down into the
pit, and I desire that the chain be there pulled upon
them, if possible during the performance of a piece,
the whole to be executed without ceremony or show
of grief."]
\S12:269  Mur
\N16 Neary continued to gaze on the sheet for
some time after he had ceased to read. At
last he put it back in the envelope and handed
it to Celia, who grasped it to tear it across,
remembered her solitude was not without
witnesses and contented herself for the time
being with crumpling it in the palm of her
hand.
\S12:269  Mur
\N24 "[The necessary house,"] said the coroner,
catching up his hat and umbrella.
\S12:269  Mur
\N26 "[Their happiest hours,"] groaned Miss Counihan.
"[When is it dated?"]
\S12:269  Mur
\N28 "[Burnt,"] said Wylie.
\S12:269  Mur
\N29 "[Body and all,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\P12:270  Mur
\S12:270  Mur
\N1 Bim and Ticklepenny had gone, already they
were far away, behind a tree, in the sun.
\S12:270  Mur
\N3 "[Leave me among the slops,"] begged Ticklepenny,
"[do not send me back to the wards."]
\S12:270  Mur
\N5 "[Darling,"] said Bim, "[that is entirely up
to you."]
\S12:270  Mur
\N7 The coroner had gone, he unbuttoned his
black and striped with one hand and drove
with the other, sweater and slacks would soon
enfold him.
\S12:270  Mur
\N11 Celia was going.
\S12:270  Mur
\N12 "[Just one moment,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
"[What arrangements do you wish to make?"]
\S12:270  Mur
\N14 "[Arrangements?"] said Neary.
\S12:270  Mur
\N15 "[The essence of all cold storage,"] said Dr\.
Killiecrankie, "[is a free turrnover. I need every
refrigerator."]
\S12:270  Mur
\N18 "[I shall be outside,"] said Celia.
\S12:270  Mur
\N19 Neary and Wylie listened for the sound of
the outer door opened and closed. It did not
come and Neary stopped listening. Then it
came, neither loudly nor softly, and Wylie
stopped listening.
\S12:270  Mur
\N24 "[Surely his last wish is sacred,"] said Miss
Counihan. "[Surely we are bound to honour it."]
\S12:270  Mur
\N26 "[Hardly his last, I fancy,"] said Wylie, "[all
things considered."]
\S12:270  Mur
\N28 "[Do you incinerate here?"] said Neary.
\P12:271  Mur
\S12:271  Mur
\N1 Dr\. Killiecrankie confessed to a small close
furnace of the reverberatory type, in which
the toughest body, mind and soul could be relied
on to revert, in under an hour, for the negligible
sum of thirty shillings, to ash of an eminently
portable quantity.
\S12:271  Mur
\N7 Neary slapped down his cheque-book on the
slab, wrote four cheques and handed them round.
To Miss Counihan and Wylie he said good-bye,
to Cooper "[Wait"], to Dr\. Killiecrankie, "[I
trust you will accept my cheque."]
\S12:271  Mur
\N12 "[Accompanied by your card,"] said Dr\.
Killiecrankie. "[Thank you."]
\S12:271  Mur
\N14 "[When it is ready,"] said Neary, "[give it
to this man, and to no one else."]
\S12:271  Mur
\N16 "[This is all rather irregular,"] said Dr\. Killiecrankie.
\S12:271  Mur
\N18 "[Life is all rather irregular,"] said Neary.
\S12:271  Mur
\N19 Miss Counihan and Wylie had gone. The
scarlet leaves drooped over them, they consulted
together. Neary had not distinguished between
their services, or their sexes, but had been not
ungenerous with an even hand. She, in
obedience to an impulse of long standing,
seized him passionately by the Fifty Shilling
lapels and cried:
\S12:271  Mur
\N27 "[Do not leave me, oh do not walk out on
me at this unspeakable juncture."]
\P12:272  Mur
\S12:272  Mur
\N1 She impeded his view, he caught her by the
wrists, she tightened her hold and continued.
\S12:272  Mur
\N3 "[Oh hand in hand let us return to the dear
land of our birth, the bays, the bogs, the moors,
the glens, the lakes, the rivers, the streams,
the brooks, the mists, the-+-er-+-fens, the-+-er-+-
glens, by to-night's mail-train."]
\S12:272  Mur
\N8 Not only was there no sign of Celia, but in
an hour the banks would close. Wylie squeezed
open the hands and hastened away. He had
indeed to leave her, but not for long, for his
tastes were expensive and Cooper had whispered
that the Cox was dead. Miss Counihan followed
slowly.
\S12:272  Mur
\N15 The Cox had swallowed 110 aspirins following
the breaking off of a friendship with a Mr\. Sacha
Few, an anti-vivisection worker.
\S12:272  Mur
\N18 Neary and Cooper came out, closely followed
by Dr\. Killiecrankie, who locked the mortuary,
f+ixed Cooper with his eye, pointed to the ground
at his feet, said, "[Be here in an hour"], and was
gone.
\S12:272  Mur
\N23 Neary seeing Wylie afar off, Miss Counihan
following slowly and no sign of Celia, said,
"[Dump it anywhere"], and hastened away.
\S12:272  Mur
\N26 Cooper called after him:
\S12:272  Mur
\N27 "[She is dead."]
\S12:272  Mur
\N28 Neary stopped but did not turn. He thought
\P12:273  Mur
\N1 for a second that Celia was meant. Then he
corrected himself and exulted.
\S12:273  Mur
\N3 "[Some time,"] said Cooper.
\S12:273  Mur
\N4 Neary went on, Cooper stood looking after
him. Wylie having travelled twice as fast as
Miss Counihan, disappeared round the corner
of the main block. Miss Counihan turned,
saw Neary coming up behind her at a great
pace, stopped, then advanced slowly to meet
him. Neary tacked sharply, straightened up
when she made no move to cut him off and
passed her rapidly at a comfortable remove,
his hat raised in salute and his head averted.
Miss Counihan followed slowly.
\S12:273  Mur
\N15 Cooper did not know what had happened
to set him free of those feelings that for so many
years had forbidden him to take a seat or
uncover his head, nor did he pause to inquire.
He placed his ancient bowler crown upward
on the step, squatted high above it, took careful
aim through his crutch, closed his eye, set his
teeth, f+lung his feet forward into space and came
down on his buttocks with the force of a pile
ram. No second blow was necessary.
\S12:273  Mur
\N25 The furnace would not draw, it was past
f+ive o'clock before Cooper got away from the
Mercyseat with the parcel of ash under his arm.
It must have weighed well on four pounds.
\P12:274  Mur
\N1 Various ways of getting rid of it suggested
themselves to him on the way to the station.
Finally he decided that the most convenient
and inconspicuous was to drop it in the f+irst
considerable receptacle for refuse that he came
to. In Dublin he need only have sat down on
the nearest bench and waited. Soon one of
the gloomy dustmen would have come, wheeling
his cart marked, "[Post your litter here."] But
London was less conscious of her garbage, she
had not given her scavenging to aliens.
\S12:274  Mur
\N12 He was turning into the station, without
having met any considerable receptacle for
refuse, when a burst of music made him halt
and turn. It was the pub across the way,
opening for the evening session. The lights
sprang up in the saloon, the doors burst open,
the radio struck up. He crossed the street and
stood on the threshold. The f+loor was palest
ochre, the pin-tables shone like silver, the quoits
board had a net, the stools the high rungs that
he loved, the whiskey was in glass tanks, a slow
cascando of pellucid yellows. A man brushed
past him into the saloon, one of the millions
that had been wanting a drink for the past
two hours. Cooper followed slowly and sat
down at the bar, for the f+irst time in more than
twenty years.
\P12:275  Mur
\S12:275  Mur
\N1 "[What are you taking, friend?"] said the man.
\S12:275  Mur
\N2 "[The f+irst is mine,"] said Cooper, his voice
trembling.
\S12:275  Mur
\N4 Some hours later Cooper took the packet of
ash from his pocket, where earlier in the evening
he had put it for greater security, and threw
it angrily at a man who had given him great
offence. It bounced, burst, off the wall on to
the f+loor, where at once it became the object
of much dribbling, passing, trapping, shooting,
punching, heading and even some recognition
from the gentleman's code. By closing time
the body, mind and soul of Murphy were freely
distributed over the f+loor of the saloon; and
before another dayspring greyened the earth
had been swept away with the sand, the beer,
the butts, the glass, the matches, the spits,
the vomit.
\L13:276  Mur
\N1 LATE afternoon, Saturday, October the 26th.
A mild, clear, sunless day, sudden gentle eddies
of rotting leaves, branches still against the still
sky, from a chimney a pine of smoke.
\S13:276  Mur
\N5 Celia wheeled Mr\. Willoughby Kelly south
along the Broad Walk. He wore his kiting
costume, a glistening slicker many sizes too
large for him and a yachting-cap many sizes
too small, though the smallest and largest of
their kind obtainable. He sat bolt upright,
with one gloved hand clutching the winch,
with the other the kite furled and in its sheath,
and his blue eyes blazed in the depths of their
sockets. To either side of him the levers f+lailed
the air with heavy strokes, causing a light draught
that he found not unpleasant, for he burned
with excitement.
\S13:276  Mur
\N18 At the top of the incline he laid the winch
and kite in his lap and seized the pulls. It
was the signal for Celia to let go. His arms
f+lashed back and forth, faster and faster as the
\P13:277  Mur
\N1 chair gathered speed, until he was rocking
crazily along at a good 12 m\.p\.h\., a danger
to himself and to others. Then resisting with
one hand the pull, with the other the thrust
of the levers, he brought himself smoothly to
rest level with the statue of Queen Victoria,
whom he greatly admired, as a woman and as
a queen.
\S13:177  Mur
\N9 It was only in the legs and face that Mr\.
Kelly was badly gone, he still had plenty of
vigour in his arms and torso.
\S13:277  Mur
\N12 He was as fond of his chair in his own way as
Murphy had been of his.
\S13:277  Mur
\N14 Celia was a long time coming. He unwrapped
the old silk kite, stained and faded hexagon of
crimson, stretched it on its asterisk of sticks,
made fast the tail and line, tested the tassels
one by one. One just such milky Saturday
afternoon many years previously a regular had
said: "[Silk ain't worth a b\-\-. Give me nainsook."]
To which Mr\. Kelly recalled with satisfaction
the exact terms of his rejoinder, which
had been loudly applauded: "[Nainsook my
rump."]
\S13:277  Mur
\N25 Celia touched the back of his chair and he
said:
\S13:277  Mur
\N27 "[You were a long time."]
\S13:277  Mur
\N28 "[Business,"] said Celia.
\P13:278  Mur
\S13:278  Mur
\N1 The leaves began to lift and scatter, the higher
branches to complain, the sky broke and curdled
over f+lecks of skim blue, the pine of smoke
toppled into the east and vanished, the pond
was suddenly a little panic of grey and white,
of water and gulls and sails.
\S13:278  Mur
\N7 It was as though Time suddenly lost patience,
or had an anxiety attack.
\S13:278  Mur
\N9 Beyond the Long Water Rosie Dew and Nelly,
the worst of her heat behind her, turned their
faces to the rising wind and home. A pair of
socks was waiting from Lord Gall. He had
written:"[If this pair of socks does not prove
more productive, I shall have to try a new
control."]
\S13:278  Mur
\N16 Celia wheeled Mr\. Kelly into position, at
the north-east corner of the plot between the
Round Pond and the Broad Walk, the prow
of his chair wedged against the railing. She
took the assembled kite gently from his hands,
backed along the path until she stood on the
margin of the water, held up the kite as high
as her arms would reach and waited for the
glove to fall. The wind blew her skirt against
her legs, her jacket back from her breasts. A
week-end lecher well advanced in years, sprawling
on his sacrum (which was a mass of eczema)
in a chair directly before her, discomposed his
\P13:279  Mur
\N1 features in what he had good reason to suppose
was the smile obscene, and jingled his change,
his very small change. Celia smiled back,
strained upward with her arms, settled herself
more f+irmly on the ground.
\S13:279  Mur
\N6 Mr\. Kelly's hand felt the wind he wanted,
the glove fell, Celia threw up the kite. And
so great was his skill that in f+ive minutes he
was lying back, breathing hard and short, his
eyes closed of necessity but in ecstasy as it
happened, half his line paid out, sailing by
feel.
\S13:279  Mur
\N13 Celia paused for a second to clinch the client,
then rejoined Mr\. Kelly. The cord wormed
slowly off the winch-+-out, back a little, stop;
out, back a little, stop. The historical process
of the hardened optimists. With still a quarter
of the line to go the kite rode without a f+licker
high above the Dell, a speck in the glades that
this wind always opened in the east. The chair
drove against the railing, Mr\. Kelly wished
his bottom were more prehensile. Without
opening his eyes he said:
\S13:279  Mur
\N24 "[You did that very nicely."]
\S13:279  Mur
\N25 Celia did not choose to misunderstand him.
\S13:279  Mur
\N26 "[And yesterday?"] said Mr\. Kelly.
\S13:279  Mur
\N27 "[A kid and a drunk,"] said Celia.
\S13:279  Mur
\N28 Mr\. Kelly let out a wild rush of line, say the
\P13:280  Mur
\N1 industrial revolution, then without recoil or
stop, gingerly, the last few feet. The kite
being now absolutely at the end of its tether,
he sat up and opened his eyes, hypermetropic
in the extreme, to admire the effect.
\S13:280  Mur
\N6 Except for the sagging soar of line, undoubtedly
superb so far as it went, there was nothing to
be seen, for the kite had disappeared from view.
Mr\. Kelly was enraptured. Now he could
measure the distance from the unseen to the seen,
now he was in a position to determine the point
at which seen and unseen met. It would be
an unscientif+ic observation, so many and so
f+itful were the imponderables involved. But
the pleasure accruing to Mr\. Kelly would be
in no way inferior to that conferred (presumably)
on Mr\. Adams by his beautiful deduction of
Neptune from Uranus. He f+ixed with his eagle
eyes a point in the empty sky where he fancied
the kite to swim into view, and wound carefully
in.
\S13:280  Mur
\N22 Moving away a little Celia also looked at
the sky, not with the same purpose as Mr\. Kelly,
for she knew that he would see it long before
she could, but simply to have that unction of
soft sunless light on her eyes that was all she
remembered of Ireland. Gradually she saw
other kites, but above all the tandem of the
\P13:281  Mur
\N1 child that had not answered her good night,
because he had been singing. She recognised
the unusual coupling, not in f+ile but abreast.
\S13:281  Mur
\N4 The ludicrous fever of toys struggling skyward,
the sky itself more and more remote, the wind
tearing the awning of cloud to tatters, pale
limitless blue and green recessions laced with
strands of scud, the light failing-+-once she
would have noticed these things. She watched
the tandem coming shakily down from the
turmoil, the child running forward to break
its fall, his trouble when he failed, his absorbed
kneeling over the damage. He did not sing
as he departed, nor did she hail him.
\S13:281  Mur
\N15 The wail of the rangers came faintly out of
the east against the wind. \iAll\r \iout\r. \iAll\r \iout\r.
\iAll\r \iout\r. Celia turned and looked at Mr\. Kelly.
He lay back sideways in the chair, his cheek
on his shoulder, a fold of the slicker lifting
his lip in a mild snarl, not dying but dozing.
As she watched the winch sprang from his f+ingers,
struck violently against the railing, the string
snapped, the winch fell to the ground, Mr\.
Kelly awoke.
\S13:281  Mur
\N25 \iAll\r \iout\r. \iAll\r \iout\r.
\S13:281  Mur
\N26 Mr\. Kelly tottered to his feet, tossed up his
arms high and wide and quavered away down
the path that led to the water, a ghastly, lamentable
\P13:282  Mur
\N1 f+igure. The slicker trailed along the ground,
the skull gushed from under the cap like a
dome from under its lantern, the ravaged face
was a cramp of bones, throttled sounds jostled
in his throat.
\S13:282  Mur
\N6 Celia caught him on the margin of the pond.
The end of the line skimmed the water, jerked
upward in a wild whirl, vanished joyfully in
the dusk. Mr\. Kelly went limp in her arms.
Someone fetched the chair and helped to get
him aboard. Celia toiled along the narrow
path into the teeth of the wind, then faced
north up the wide hill. There was no shorter
way home. The yellow hair fell across her
face. The yachting-cap clung like a clam to
the skull. The levers were the tired heart.
She closed her eyes.
\S13:282  Mur
\N18 \iAll\r \iout\r.