"Ah. I thought so. But I will introduce you slowly to the pleasurings. Very slowly. You will thank me. When you get into the grisliness. That you can savour such things as I can show you. The sin. I love the sin. That's what I most desire. You look so left out of it all Balthazar."
"Would you care to come back to my rooms with me and have some cocoa Beefy."
Along the Liffey quays this night, puddles of water on the cobble stoned street. Lonely lamplights. Coal dust and barrels, crates and bundles of wire. Great shadow of the gas tank rearing in the sky. A whiff and sniff and smell of pine timber. Beefy reaching up his arm to put a hand on Balthazar's shoulder. To look with easy warm eyes on this pale blond apprehensive face.
"Balthazar, my dear man. I am most awfully sorry. I could not resist to shock you. Do you know you are a most handsome fellow. You are in fact very beautiful. Your beauty would lend so well to my planned defilement. Look at you. Fve never seen anything like your saintliness. Have you been seeing Miss Fitzdare."
"I had lunch with Miss Fitzdare and her aunt and uncle."
"O my God how charming. Did you sit poised on the settee."
"Yes."
"Did Miss Fitzdare tinkle the wires of her harpsicord."
"Yes."
"I knew it. For joy. I knew it. She is a lovely creature. But think what wonderful defilement you could lend your spirit to tonight. Sunday. After all the prayers are said. But I think it's so splendid. You and Fitzdare. It crucifies me, your blond and her black beauty. O my God."
"Please come and have cocoa, Beefy."
Wild shadows against a sky faintly purple. Clouds rolling with moonlit edges. The blast of a ship's whistle. A hawser splashing in the water. Up in the crystal night the ship's red light. Trembling engines as the great black silhouette moves out on the flowing river.
"Ah but I must go. Upon my appointed rounds."
"I have cream to go on top of the cocoa."
"I must not be distracted from my mission. Sinful desire consumes me. The most malodorous and desecrated defilement is waiting. Only fifteen steps away. Come. Please. Just along here. Let me show you. You see nothing. But wait. We go now up into this doorway. It will amaze you. You will thrill to this creature."
An opening broken door up wide greasy granite steps. A stench of death. The choking wail and sob of a child. A lurking face. A girl. Half her face in the light. A tiny bow of ribbon tied in her hair. Her hands clutching a broken black shiny bag.
"Ah Balthazar this is my queen. She waits for me here. Her name is Rebecca. Isn't she beautiful. But she does not think so herself. But Rebecca, you are."
"Go on now I'm not."
"Rebecca, I want you to meet my friend. He is beautiful too, isn't he."
"Ah he is."
"But it is I who have a horn on me this evil night. Rebecca you have the most splendid eyes to gaze upon this horn of mine."
"O go on with you I think you're crazy."
"And you have limbs. Fine limbs. I could eat up your white beauty Rebecca you know that I could, don't you. Wait Bal-thazar, don't go. You must not leave. Rebecca will fetch her sister for you."
"Ah sure you've got the gentleman upset, can't you see he's upset.'
"Balthazar you're not upset. I would never want that. Isn't it marvellous here."
"I think I must go Beefy."
"Come. With us. Rebecca too will come. And so will her sister. We'll go over the fence at the back gate. Even though needs be a spear up the rear. And I will take Rebecca and her sister to my rooms. We will all like it there. Come now, Rebecca. Let us get your sister. And I beg you Balthazar don't desert me now."
Their feet sounding up the broken stairs. Past a great tall window on the landing, its frame buckled, string and bits of rag blowing in the breezes. A three legged dog hobbling down between their legs. Bits of bicycles and broken prams along a wall. The dim slit of light under doors. Where dark Dublin lies sleeping.
On the attic landing Rebecca pushed through a door into a great darkened room. Rags and bones and suitcases in a corner, hunks of plaster hanging from the ceiling. A man sitting hunched forward on a chair staring silently into the red dying embers of a fire who slowly turns a head to nod at Beefy and Beefy nodding a smile to Balthazar.
A table covered in newspaper, cups and crusts of bread. By a red candle burning on a cardboard altar near a window a thin dark girl sits huddled reading in the flickering light. Rebecca whispers in her ear. And they both look at seven heads sticking from the covers of a great mattress on the floor. The dark girl steps behind a torn curtain and emerges with a handbag. Pulling a sweater over her shoulders as she turns towards the sleeping figures under a picture of a bleeding heart encased in thorns.
Balthazar B descended last out of this broken gutted building, taking deep breaths as they walked under a black railway trestle towards Trinity down an empty desolate lane. By locked up shops and closed pubs. Along Fenian Street taken that night with Beefy when I first met Fitzdare. The heads of death lurk in all the black skulls of houses. The girl dark and small with beady black eyes. A gold cross upon her throat.
Blue dress, blue sweater, her elbows poking out the sleeves.
And I feel so bereft of Fitzdare. So alien to this wisp of girl.
"What's your name.'
"My name is Breda. What is your name."
"My name is Balthazar.'
"Are you a student.'
"Yes. What are you."
"I work in a pub out towards Howth. I'm a barmaid. I'm not her sister. She enjoys a lie. I come from Cavan. I was just into Dublin to help take care of her little brothers and sisters. She's the oldest, she's twenty three. Her mother died three months ago. I know of your friend. He's been good to her family but he's a holy terror in other ways. You don't look the sort as would be down the Quays associating with strange women. Are you afraid of me."
"No."
"You won't say much. I don't mind. You're English, that's the way you all are. Never say what's on your mind. How will he ever get us over that big fence."
Beefy high up balanced between the fence spears. A hand held down to Rebecca. She reached up, one foot on Balthazar's shoulder. Beefy with a great grunt and heave lifted her and their hands parted to drop her back down again into the arms of Balthazar. As Beefy lowered himself into Trinity and grinned through the fence bars.
"Come now."
"Ah no. I'm not climbing up that again."
"You must make her Balthazar, grab her arm and twist it."
"Ah you're not to twist me arm."
"Chuck her in the gutter Balthazar, this is no time for niceties."
"I'll give him one in the jewels if he does."
"We must get them over Balthazar. Put them through the most amazing antics you have ever seen. Here let's try to squeeze them between the bars."
"Beefy the porter's lodge is just there. We'll be seen.'
"You'll squeeze neither of us between the bars I'm telling you."
"Just look at them. The two of them. Think of the defilement."
"Come on Breda, let's go on out of this now."
"Stop them Balthazar, stop them, I'm coming over. We must never let the two beauties go. It will be as splendid as running wild through a hospital of incurables. Get them back."
Balthazar stood and watched Beefy chase the girls down Lincoln Place into Westland Row. Where they have an Academy of Music and where Miss Fitzdare may have learned the harpsicord. They returned hand in hand in the darkness. Beefy's eyes coming near, alight with pleasure. So strange he treats them with such soft grace. Between the threats of violence. So brilliant in scholarship. So fearless at sport.
"I have it Balthazar. I have it. We shall enter by taxi. It is all agreed. Grandly through the front gates. Under the noses of porters. And be in my rooms in Botany Bay in due course and defilement."
In the shadows of Wicklow Street just past a window display of spring fashions in Switzers a taxi was loaded with the women. A white five pound note passed by Beefy to the taxi man. The girls covered in a rug squeezed down between the knees of the gentlemen. Beefy handed his silver flask to Balthazar to take brandy at this delicate moment. Poised for fluent entrance without the flicker of a lid, or murmur of lie. To present at the great wooden gates. And safely pass.