Neary again buried his head in his hands.
‘Cathleen,’ said Wylie, ‘tell the Professor the worst.’
‘Eight sixes forty-eight,’ said Cathleen, ‘and twos sixteen one pound.’
In the street Neary said:
‘Wylie, why are you so kind?’
‘I don’t seem able to control myself,’ said Wylie, ‘in the presence of certain predicaments.’
‘You shall find me I think not ungrateful,’ said Neary.
They went a little way in silence. Then Neary said:
‘I cannot think what women see in Murphy.’
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.
‘Can you?’ said Neary.
Wylie considered for a moment. Then he said:
‘It is his—’ stopping for want of the right word. There seemed to be, for once, a right word.
‘His what?’ said Neary.
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.
‘His surgical quality,’ said Wylie.
It was not quite the right word.
5
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 floor 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 quite easy in his mind about it. The ceiling was lost in the shadows, yes, really lost in the shadows.
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.
An immediate flaw 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.
‘A lady,’ said Murphy bitterly, ‘not a landlady. Thin lips and a Doric pelvis. We are P.G.s.’
‘All the more reason to find work,’ said Celia.
Everything that happened became with Celia yet another reason for Murphy’s finding 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. 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?
He kept these forebodings to himself, and indeed tried to suppress them, so genuine was his anxiety that for him hence-forward 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.
Not the least remarkable of Murphy’s innumerable classifications 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.
Celia was conscious of two equally important reasons for insisting as she did. The first was her desire to make a man of Murphy! Yes, June to October, counting in the blockade she had almost five months’ experience of Murphy, yet the image of him as a man of the world continued to beckon her on. The second was her aversion to resuming her own work, as would certainly be necessary if Murphy did not find 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.
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.
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 finer values of tones, so that it was never quiet in the room, but brightening and darkening in a slow ample flicker that went on all day, brightening against the darkening that was its end. A peristalsis of light, worming its way into the dark.
She preferred sitting in the chair, steeping herself in these faint eddies till they made an amnion about her own disquiet, to walking the streets (she could not disguise her gait) or wandering in the Market, where the frenzied justification 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.
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.
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 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.
‘I have brought you—’ she said.
‘Come in,’ said Celia.
‘A nice hot cup of tea,’ said Miss Carridge. ‘Drink it before it coagulates.’
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 the sight of Celia taking the tea, Celia could not hold hers at the smell of Miss Carridge standing over her.
‘I hope you like the aroma,’ said Miss Carridge. ‘Choicest Lapsang Souchong.’
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 inspiration, for Miss Carridge pau
sed on the way to the door.
‘Hark,’ she said, pointing upward.
A soft padding to and fro was audible.
‘The old boy,’ said Miss Carridge. ‘Never still.’
Happily Miss Carridge was a woman of few words. When body odour and volubility meet, then there is no remedy.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Murphy on the jobpath was a striking figure. 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.
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 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 qui vive 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.
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 flat of this. How he winced, the honest obstetrician, a devout member of the old Dublin Orchestral Society and an amateur flautist 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.
His rattle will make amends.
His suit was not green, but æruginous. 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 æruginous. One beheld in fact a relic of those sanguine days when as a theological student he had used to lie awake night after night with Bishop Bouvier’s Supplementum ad Tractatum de Matrimonio under his pillow. What a work that was to be sure! A Ciné Bleu scenario in goatish Latin. Or pondering Christ’s parthian shaft: It is finished.
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 reflexed 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 inflexible 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.
Murphy never wore a waistcoat. It made him feel like a woman.
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.
These remains of a decent outfit Murphy lit 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.
Murphy never wore a hat, the memories it awoke of the caul were too poignant, especially when he had to take it off.
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.
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.
But now it was winter-time again, night’s young thoughts had been put back an hour, the multis latebra opportuna 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.
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-five he could get off the mark without delay. Then slowly past the last bourns, the Perseverance and Temperance Yards, the Vis Vitæ 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.
The first 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 fire 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.
*
Suk’s theme of Murphy’s heaven went everywhere 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 filled him with satisfaction. It confirmed the diagram and reduced by just so much the danger of Bright’s disease, Grave’s disease, strangury and fits.
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 i
n which he had the least confidence, his own, would have been fulfilled.
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 specification was superfluous. 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.
There seems to be a certain disharmony between the only two canons in which Murphy can feel the least confidence. So much the worse for him, no doubt.
Celia said that if he did not find work at once she would have to go back to hers. Murphy knew what that meant. No more music.
This phrase is chosen with care, lest the filthy censors should lack an occasion to commit their filthy synecdoche.
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, fingering his lemon bow nervously. This was the first time he had actually presented himself as candidate for a definite post. Up till then he had been content to expose himself 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.
The chandlers all came galloping out to see the smart boy.
‘’E ain’t smart,’ said the chandler, ‘not by a long chork ’e ain’t.’
‘Nor ’e ain’t a boy,’ said the chandler’s semi-private convenience, ‘not to my mind ’e ain’t.’
‘’E don’t look rightly human to me,’ said the chandlers’ eldest waste product, ‘not rightly.’
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!’