‘Good grief Kildare, what on earth’s the matter, you’re bent over like an old man, are you alright.’
‘I believe I may just have a small rupture.’
‘Good lord, we had better summon the doctor.’
‘O no I’ll be quite alright, it easily passes off.’
‘Rupture Kildare, does not pass off. Indeed you can get a strangulated hernia.’
‘O I’m sure it’s perhaps not rupture. Colic or something. Quite temporary.’
‘Colic, o well, my Domestic Homoeopathy Manual has just the jolly job for you. Hot flannels applied on the belly. And you must abstain from green vegetable and other flatulent food.’
Yet, having it off with Miss von B had so much changed one’s life. For a start my voice was considerably deeper. And I was able to wear my foreskin back. It was worrying however that nearly nothing else entered one’s mind. And there might be something going wrong with my brain. For even as I used to do, watching the rooks, or tramping for a walk up over spy glass hill, everywhere in front of one’s eyes was the moaning writhing body of Miss von B. And I must admit that not everything was pleasure. Those first few times I blushed and shivered and trembled and at times was revolted. Indeed a whole fortnight passed before I was able to avoid vomiting usually once before heading up the stairs and again in her room and again when I returned to mine. And dear me, once right on top of her. Later of course, when I returned to the privacy of my own chamber, I did nearly laugh my head off. It was the extraordinary panicky manner in which she tried to get out of the way of that evening’s digested dinner. Since I was in her we were rather pinned together, and she would move one way just as I was trying to move the opposite. I had also to get used to one or two regrettable things in the way of her personal smells occasioned when she could not bathe. When, as a result of a two week visit from the plumber who went round scratching his head and twisting and banging the pipes, finally had water flying out of everywhere but where it should. Although she retired behind a screen to put some contraption up her I always found it rather disconcerting especially as she would with equanimity loose farts. However when she did this under the covers she did explain that if such gas should therein remain bottled up there could result one awful battle to finally bust it out. As I got used to her ways I laid a few myself and we would both lie there listening together to see who could make the most interesting bang. She was most remarkably handy with her tongue as well. And would put it around things and in places that most surprised me. And just so that she would not think I was as sordid as she was I thought it appropriate to mildly remonstrate.
‘Even though I like you doing that to me isn’t it filthy and disgusting.’
‘You Irish, your minds are as stupid as your bodies are usually dirty.’
The train now passing by bleak black rooftops and over a trestle bridge in the misty darkness. Lamplights up streets glowing on the shabby red bricked tiny houses. Smoke curling thick from chimneys into the hovering fog. And as the train pulled into the station, the legal gentleman again smiled at me. He also civilly bowed to Mr Arland who bowed back as he was leaving the carriage. The priest however appeared to like one even less now at the end of the journey and took his black case down from the rack with an impatient long sigh.
The great glass roof over us in the terminus. A porter, already shouting his services to the emerging first class passengers, pushed a noisy iron wheeled barrow in front of him and at Mr Arland’s direction took our luggage. Turning continually to speak back to us.
‘This way now gentlemen if you please.’
And Mr Arland absent mindedly turned right down grey granite steps. To then hear the porter calling after us from the top, to say he had a carriage waiting at the other entrance. Where he hefted our luggage up on the brougham’s roof and then made vague mutterings over his tip until Mr Arland gave him an extra shilling.
‘Well there you are Kildare, evidence of the greed overcoming modern society.’
The horsecab driver with his big crimson nose sticking out from under his top hat, folding his whip and climbing up on his perch to sit pulling an old piece of burlap across his legs. Giving his thin nag a feeble belt across the quarters, and off we trotted down this incline, the candle fluttering behind the gleaming glass of our sidelights. Turning right, out through great grey gates to suddenly stop. This morning Kern and Olav loped beside us all the way to the lodge and then just sat, their great hulking shaggy shapes, disconsolate as we disappeared down the road. And this city street aswarm with bicycles. Coming by in a great wave as we waited. And here and there were motor cars. The huge garda finally putting up his white gloved hand to halt them all. And we pulled out, passing this policeman nearly as tall as the roof of our horse carriage and as wide as a full grown bull across the shoulders.
‘Well Kildare, we made it multa gemens. Five hours nearly, to go sixty miles. Translate please.’
‘With many an agony.’
‘With many a groan Kildare, with many a groan.’
A sign at the door of a dirty red bricked building said Coroner’s Court. And next to it written on closed big dark wooden gates, City Morgue. Newsboys on the street corners shouting out Herald and Mail. Their tattered jackets too small and their white naked legs and blue white feet on the wet blocks of granite, phlegm streaming from their noses. The evening herd of cold pinched dark coated figures waiting to cross at the pavement’s edge, their breath making steam from their mouths. The strange purple of the sky. A ship hooting on the river. Great stack of barrels quayside being loaded by a ship’s derrick under lights. And bouncing on the cobbles, clattering huge carts tugged by massive horses. Followed here and there by impatient automobiles. Must be sadness where so many of the lower orders live inside the big broken windows. Behind these mournful unloved walls.
‘Kildare cheer up. It will appear much better to you in the morning, I assure you.’
‘It looks so appalling. Down those streets.’
‘In a moment or two and just over this bridge we shall be in a better part of town. A bath, a little supper in you, will put a completely new complexion on it. Now in that building there, once when the college baths were closed, I cleansed myself as an undergraduate.’
Past pubs, a coal merchant, gentleman’s clothiers and a shop selling yeast. And on the right, a massive edifice with porticoes and pillars blackened by age and bleached by rain. Another garda even as big as the previous one, his nose and face red in the cold mist, directing traffic outside the gates of the college. At which Mr Arland seemed longingly to look. Beyond the railings either side of the entrance path, a statue standing up out of lawns flat velvet and green. And we trotted on behind a tram, clanging its bell, roaring and grinding on its track. Indeed one felt without being jubilant, at least a little more hopeful. And now the tram with its two tiers of dim yellow lighted windows, turning as we head straight. The horses’ hooves slipping on the wet wooden blocks.