It’s a bit on the elegant side for the rest of the room,’ Fitz said.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Her pleasure touched Fitz.
‘That’s two beautiful things to look at every day,’ he said.
‘I’m sure he spent a fortune on it, it’s too much to give.’
‘In a way it’s just as well,’ Fitz said, ‘he’ll have less to act the tin elephant with.’
‘Does he never try to save?’
‘He’d rather give it away.’
‘You have generous friends,’ Mary said. She stood back to look at it once more.
‘Let me hear it chime again,’ she asked.
Fitz moved the hands and the clock responded.
‘It has a happy sound,’ she pronounced.
Fitz took the lamp and they went into the bedroom together. They undressed. Everything had gone welclass="underline" the ceremony, the breakfast, the afternoon expedition around Howth Head, the customary wedding party. They lay together in the darkness, two lovers in a dilapidated world, knowing each other for the first time. They were near enough to the river to hear, faintly, the siren of a ship. The city grew quiet. Before they slept the clock in the outer room chimed once again.
‘Listen to it,’ Mary whispered.
They listened together. Fitz covered her mouth with his. They forgot the clock and the plaintive siren and the house which was peopled above and below them.
Pat left the rest at Ringsend Bridge and watched them go down past the Catholic church. Its back wall overhung the Dodder. From the bridge he saw the masts of the sailing ships that lay close against the church. They had a derelict look. The water about them gleamed faintly, gathering what light reached it from the few, scattered stars. The stars had a misty look of imminent rain. Under the great hump of the bridge the river, already swollen, moved towards the intricate system of docks and canals which would conduct it deviously to the Liffey and so to the sea. The breeze carried the taint of salt water, a forlorn smell.
As he walked back towards the city the rain began. It was late. The last trams were arriving at Ringsend Depot. They swung into the sheds with a great rattling and clanging, with trolleys that hissed and sparked as they crossed the wire intersections. They left a taste of metal in the street. Machinery vibrated behind the grey walls of Boland’s Mills, and the little, lighted cabin of the overhead telpher made a blurred circle above the foundry yard before it disappeared into the awning of one of the furnace houses. Pat turned into Townsend Street and crossed Butt Bridge. The rain began to seep through his clothes. He had been sharing with Fritz and had neglected to make provision for a bed now that the arrangement had come to an end. But he was contented with drink. He knew what he was going to do.
In the shelter of Amiens Street Bridge he uncorked a bottle of whiskey, drank and went on. The streets were badly surfaced. Already muddy pools were beginning to form. There were lights in occasional windows and once he heard a piano playing
‘For in his bloom
He met his doom
Tim Kelly’s early grave.’
A policeman with his cloak fully buttoned and the great collar covering his ears turned to stare at him as he passed. Pat went on, changing the song.
‘O girl of my heart you are waiting for me
Mora, my own love
Mora, my true love
Will you be mine through the long years to be?’
He turned into a narrower, muddier street and climbed the stairs, still singing, his boots and his voice making a rowdy din. Someone jerked open a door.
‘I thought so,’ Lily Maxwell cried.
‘Lily, my own.’
‘Come in out of that,’ she grumbled at him.
‘Lily, my true love.’
‘Do you want to bring the whole bloody Metropolitan Constabulary in on top of me?’ she shouted at him.
Pat held out his arms to her and begged, ‘Will you be mine through the long years to be?’
She pushed him in and closed the door.
‘Will you look at the cut of him?’ she said, appealing to one of the pictures on the wall.
Water was running from his hat. His coat was sodden and shapeless. She took it off him. She sat him down at the fire. Lily’s room was small. An enormous iron bed with brass fittings took up most of the floor space. The fireplace, which was deep, was well filled with glowing coals, in spite of the general shortage. Lily had friends among the humble. Intimate garments were scattered haphazardly, as though Lily had been unable to make up her mind about what she was going to wear and had given it up.
‘I was at a wedding,’ Pat explained.
‘You needn’t tell me. I can smell the confetti,’ Lily said.
‘We’ll have a drink.’
‘Not any of mine, you won’t,’ Lily assured him, ‘it’s strictly for the paying guests.’
Pat produced the bottle of whiskey.
‘Out of this, Lily my own love.’
She took it. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘I bought it.’
Lily looked astounded. ‘There’ll be a blue moon tomorrow night.’
‘Will you pour the drink and not have so much bloody oul guff,’ Pat said.
The steam was rising from his trousers.
‘Take them off you,’ Lily advised.
‘Don’t be impatient.’
‘You’re full of smart answers, wherever you were.’
‘I told you, I was at a wedding.’
‘I suppose they gave you this to get shut of you,’ she said, taking the cork from the bottle.
‘You never say anything agreeable to me,’ Pat complained. ‘All the time you keep nagging.’
He was taking off his trousers.
‘Here,’ she said, throwing him a towel. He began to dry his legs.
‘Nag, nag, nag.’
‘For all the good it does. Just look at you.’
She hung his wet trousers near the fire and handed him a drink.
‘You’re not bad, after all,’ he said, sampling the whiskey. ‘How is business?’
‘Bloody terrible,’ Lily said. ‘How would you expect it to be of an Easter Tuesday. They’re all after making their Easter duty. Finishing up their retreats and mending their souls.’
‘What about the Protestants?’
‘It seems this is a Roman Catholic area.’
‘The Army?’
‘On leave. Or blew it all of an Easter Monday.’
‘And the students?’
‘They only come to be seen, most of them.’
‘Lily—you shouldn’t be in this game. I told you so.’
‘Maisie persuaded me there would be good money in it. She exaggerates a bit, the same Maisie.’
‘Then don’t settle to it. Get out of it.’
‘Back to what? To making biscuits or something for five bob a week? I had enough of that, thank you.’
‘You’d be happier.’
‘I wasn’t any happier. I was bloody well miserable, if you want to know.’
She consoled herself with a long slug of whiskey. She was sitting opposite to him at the fire, a thin, dark-haired girl with a slight figure. She had small features and neat hands that Pat liked to touch. His own had broken nails from humping sacks and coal-dirt which had settled permanently in the pores. She got up and began to twist the ends of his trousers. A stream of water fell from them.
‘You’ll wind up with pneumonia,’ she said.
‘I have money, Lily.’
‘That’s two blue moons tomorrow.’
‘The horses,’ Pat said. ‘Give me another drink and I’ll tell you about it.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Lily said. But she gave him the drink. While she squeezed his trousers she said to him: ‘Are you not staying?’
He had been about to tell her the story of his luck. Her remark surprised him.