Ulysses
prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren’t they? See her as she is spoil
all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music.
The name too. _Amours_ of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud
Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered
with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart come and kiss me. Still, I feel.
The strength it gives a man. That’s the secret of it. Good job I let
off there behind the wall coming out of Dignam’s. Cider that was.
Otherwise I couldn’t have. Makes you want to sing after. _Lacaus esant
taratara_. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? Bad plan however if you
don’t know how to end the conversation. Ask them a question they ask
you another. Good idea if you’re stuck. Gain time. But then you’re in a
cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and you see she’s
on for it: good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I
nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl in Meath
street that night. All the dirty things I made her say. All wrong of
course. My arks she called it. It’s so hard to find one who. Aho! If
you don’t answer when they solicit must be horrible for them till they
harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two shillings.
Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn’t
called me sir. O, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with a
single girl! That’s what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman.
Or even hear of it. Different with me. Glad to get away from other
chap’s wife. Eating off his cold plate. Chap in the Burton today
spitting back gumchewed gristle. French letter still in my pocketbook.
Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I don’t think.
Come in, all is prepared. I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they
change the venue when it’s not what they like. Ask you do you like
mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman who. Or ask you what
someone was going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I
went the whole hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did.
She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something
awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must have been
thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she came
to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss does the trick. The
propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by
their eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till
their dying day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the
Moorish wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts
were developed. Fell asleep then. After Glencree dinner that was when
we drove home. Featherbed mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord
mayor had his eye on her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic.
There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. Up
like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be,
waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in
mother’s clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world.
And the dark one with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she
could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Molly. Why that highclass
whore in Jammet’s wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind,
please, telling me the right time? I’ll tell you the right time up a
dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times every morning, cure for
fat lips. Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game.
Of course they understand birds, animals, babies. In their line.
Didn’t look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn’t give that
satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls.
Fine eyes she had, clear. It’s the white of the eye brings that out not
so much the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting
beyond a dog’s jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high
school drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call
that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has her work cut out for her.
Never see them sit on a bench marked _Wet Paint_. Eyes all over them.
Look under the bed for what’s not there. Longing to get the fright of
their lives. Sharp as needles they are. When I said to Molly the man at
the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like,
twigged at once he had a false arm. Had, too. Where do they get that?
Typist going up Roger Greene’s stairs two at a time to show her
understandings. Handed down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean.
Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the
mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman’s eye
on a mirror. And when I sent her for Molly’s Paisley shawl to
Prescott’s by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her
stocking! Clever little minx. I never told her. Neat way she carries
parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand,
shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who did you
learn that from? Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don’t they
know! Three years old she was in front of Molly’s dressingtable, just
before we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who
knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway
not like the other. Still she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are.
Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point.
Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in
Grafton street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel.
A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads
and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy and Jacky ran out to see
and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the
rocks. Will she? Watch! Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion.
Darling, I saw, your. I saw all.
Lord!
Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan’s, Dignam’s. For
this relief much thanks. In _Hamlet,_ that is. Lord! It was all things
combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of
my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He’s right. Might have made a
worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I
will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It
couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name however
like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.
Her maiden name was Jemina Brown
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush.
Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if
it understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw
anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram’s horn. Sad however
because it lasts only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping
and papa’s pants will soon fit Willy and fuller’s earth for the baby
when they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them
out of harm’s way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam.
Children’s hands always round them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even
closed at first, sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds.
Oughtn’t to have given that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up
with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is
nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some nights when Molly
was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O’Hare I noticed her
brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too,
marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City
Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat.
Have that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in
the morning: was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the
husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like
glue. Maybe the women’s fault also. That’s where Molly can knock spots
off them. It’s the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the
figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those
others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to
introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript,
wouldn’t know what to call her. Always see a fellow’s weak point in his
wife. Still there’s destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own
secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman
didn’t take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a
shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched
them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one.
Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent
in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is
not back. Better detach.
Ow!
Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the
short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.
Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic
influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I
suppose, at once. Cat’s away, the mice will play. I remember looking in
Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism.
Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement.
And time, well that’s the time the movement takes. Then if one thing
stopped the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it’s all
arranged. Magnetic needle tells you what’s going on in the sun, the
stars. Little piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come.
Come. Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up
and look and suggest and let you see and see more and defy you if
you’re a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs, look, look
and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let fly.
Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third
person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her underjaw
stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at
the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine
voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like
flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the
paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her
slipper on the floor so they wouldn’t hear. But lots of them can’t kick
the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all
round over me and half down my back.
Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That’s her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave
you this to think of me when I’m far away on the pillow. What is it?
Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She’d like scent of that
kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her,
with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the
dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She
was wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good
conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there’s some connection.
For instance if you go into a cellar where it’s dark. Mysterious thing
too. Why did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself,
slow but sure. Suppose it’s ever so many millions of tiny grains blown
across. Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this
morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It’s like a fine
fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you
call it gossamer, and they’re always spinning it out of them, fine as
anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything
she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little
kick, taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff