Murphy

  She made a long dent in the waist of the coat. In vain, it filled out again immediately, as a punctured ball will not retain an impression.

  ‘It won’t stay,’ she said.

  Murphy sighed.

  ‘It is the second childhood,’ he said. ‘Hard on the heels of the pantaloons.’

  He kissed her, in Lydian mode, and went to the door.

  ‘I believe you’re leaving me,’ said Celia.

  ‘Perhaps for just a little while you compel me to,’ said Murphy.

  ‘For good and all.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘only for just a little while 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.

  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.

  ‘Wasn’t there to be an execution this morning?’ he said.

  ‘Never on Sunday,’ said Celia.

  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.

  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.

  When all the other circumstances of this departure had become blunted in her mind she continued to see, at the most unexpected times, whether she would or no, the hand clutching the spike of railing, the fingers loosening and tightening, higher than the dark head.

  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 goodbye. He did not hear her, he was hissing.

  His figure 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.

  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.

  ‘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 just like the old boy, God Almighty rest his immortal soul, before he was taken from us.’

  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.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Celia, ‘no special trouble.’

  ‘Ah well, we all have our troubles,’ said Miss Carridge, sighing, wishing her own were a little less penetrating.

  ‘Tell me about the old boy,’ said Celia.

  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.

  ‘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 floor. I found the tube on the bed and the cap under the bed.’ Lies. ‘He goes crawling about the floor, 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 first 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 onomatopœia with dumb-show, ‘what more do you want?’

  It was not for this that Celia had put Miss Carridge on to the old boy. She looked pleasant and waited.

  ‘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.’

  Celia agreed that to owe Miss Carridge rent would be a dreadful situation.

  ‘What did they say at the inquest?’ said Celia.

  ‘Felo-de-se,’ 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. Felo-de-se! Felo-de my rump.’ Just like Mr. Kelly.

  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.

  She and Murphy would go upstairs and leave their room, to which no sinister associations attached, free for letting.

  ‘My dear child!’ ejaculated Miss Carridge, and waited for the catch.

  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.

  ‘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?’

  ‘Less the usual commission,’ said Celia.

  ‘This is most insulting,’ said Miss Carridge, racking her brains for a means of making it less so.

  ‘How?’ said Celia. ‘Mr. Quigley will be no worse off. You are the victim of circumstances. You must live. We oblige you, you oblige us.’

  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.

  ‘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.

  ‘I must go and ask for guidance,’ she said.

  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’.

  ‘Ten per cent,’ said Celia.

  ‘Twelve and a half,’ said Miss Carridge.

  ‘Very well,’ said Celia. ‘I cannot haggle.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Miss Carridge.

  ‘If you can manage the two bags,’ said Celia, ‘I can manage the chair.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ said Miss Carridge contemptuously. She was annoyed at Celia’s having taken the divine indulgence for granted.

  ‘All,’ said Celia.

  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 fired by cupidity, Miss Carridge’s imagination was of the feeblest.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t like to sleep two in it,’ she said.

  Celia opened the window.

  ‘I expect Mr. Murphy to be away a great deal,’ she said.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘we all have our troubles.’

  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 girl, a child, an infant. In the cell of her mind, teasing the oakum of her history. Then it was finished, the days and places and things and people were untwisted and scattered, she was lying down, she had no history.

  It was a most pleasant sensation. Murphy did not come back to curtail it.

  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.

  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 diffidence.

  ‘That is very good of you,’ said Celia.

  ‘Most happy,’ said Miss Carridge.

  ‘But I think I ought to get out,’ said Celia. She had not been outside the door for more than a fortnight.

  ‘Please yourself,’ said Miss Carridge.

  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:

  ‘Lovely work, if you can get it.’

  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.

  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 off to the right into the north, round the accident house of the Royal Humane Society.

  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 flyers, but not too close. She wanted to see Mr. Kelly, but not to be seen by him. Not yet.

  The flyers 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.

  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.

  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, flown 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.

  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 flyers, 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 finesse 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 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.

  Soon the gates would close, all over the gardens the rangers were crying their cry: All out. 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.

  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 out of her room and switched on the light. Celia stopped, her feet on different steps, her hand on the banister, her face in profile.

  ‘Mr. Murphy came while you were out,’ said Miss Carridge. ‘You can’t have been gone five minutes.’

  For a full second Celia mistook this to mean that Murphy had come back.

  ‘He took his bag and the chair,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘but couldn’t wait.’

  There was the usual silence, Miss Carridge missing nothing of Celia’s expression, Celia appearing to scrutinise her hand on the banister.

  ‘Any message,’ said Celia, at last.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ said Miss Carridge.

  ‘Did Mr. Murphy leave any message?’ said Celia, turning away and taking another step upward.

  ‘Wait now till I see,’ said Miss Carridge. Celia waited.

  ‘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.

  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 finger on the switch, watching. The turn of the stair took 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 t
hat was so much less extravagant, not to mention richer in acoustic properties, listening.

  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: The Candle of Vision, by George Russell (A.E.).

  9

  Il est difficile à celui qui vit hors du monde de ne pas rechercher les siens.

  (MALRAUX)

  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.

  The head male nurse, Mr. Thomas (‘Bim’) Clinch, a huge red, bald, whiskered man of over-weening 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 first 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 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.

  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.

  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.