Murphy (16 page)

‘I was not asleep,’ said Murphy.

‘Oh,’ said Ticklepenny, ‘then you did hear me.’

Murphy looked at Ticklepenny.

‘Oh,’ said Ticklepenny, ‘just deep in thought then or plunged in a reverie maybe.’

‘What do you take me for?’ said Murphy. ‘The student of my year?’

‘Then what?’ said Ticklepenny. ‘If it is not a rude question.’

Murphy amused himself bitterly and briefly with the question of the answer he would have made to a person of his own steak and kidney, genuinely anxious to understand and desirable of being understood by, a Mr. Endon at his own degree of
incipience
for example. But before the imperfect phrase had time to come the question crumbled away in its own absurdity, the absurdity of saddling such a person with the rationalist prurit, the sceptic rut that places the objects of its curiosity on the level of Les Girls. It was not under that the rare birds of Murphy’s feather desired to stand, but by, by themselves with the best of their attention and by the others of their species with any that might be left over. It was not in order to obtain an obscene view of the surface that in days gone by the Great Auk dived under the ice, the Great Auk now no longer seen above it.

‘I do not know exactly what you want,’ said Murphy, ‘but I can tell you there is nothing I can do for you that would not be done better by anyone else. So why stay?’ 

‘Do you know what it is?’ said Ticklepenny, ‘no offence meant, you had a great look of Clarke there a minute ago.’

Clarke had been for three weeks in a katatonic stupor.

‘All but the cackle,’ said Ticklepenny.

Clarke would repeat for hours the phrase: ‘Mr. Endon is
very
superior.’

The gratified look that Murphy disdained to hide so alarmed Ticklepenny that he abandoned his purpose and rose to go, just as Murphy would not have objected to his staying a little longer. He lowered himself over the threshold, he stood on his steps with only his head appearing. He said:

‘You want to watch yourself.’

‘In what way?’ said Murphy.

‘You want to mind your health,’ said Ticklepenny.

‘In what way did I remind you of Clarke?’ said Murphy.

‘You want to take a pull on yourself,’ said Ticklepenny. ‘Good night.’

And in effect Murphy’s night was good, perhaps the best since nights began so long ago to be bad, the reason being not so much that he had his chair again as that the self whom he loved had the aspect, even to Ticklepenny’s inexpert eye, of a real alienation. Or to put it perhaps more nicely: conferred that aspect on the self whom he hated.

M
ISS
C
OUNIHAN
and Wylie were not living together!

The decaying Haydn, invited to give his opinion of
cohabitation
, replied: ‘Parallel thirds.’ But the partition of Miss Counihan and Wylie had more concrete grounds.

To begin with Miss Counihan, to begin with she was eager to get into the correct grass Dido cramp in plenty of time. She did not want to leave it to the last moment, until they were actually haling Murphy before her, and then have to scour London for a pyre that was clean, comfortable, central and not exorbitant. So she found without delay, and imparted in block capitals to Wylie, an address in Gower Street where she was on no account to be disturbed. It was almost opposite the offices of the
Spectator
, but she did not discover this until it was too late. Here she cowered, as happy as the night was short, in the midst of Indians, Egyptians, Cyprians, Japanese, Chinese, Siamese and clergymen. Little by little she sucked up to a Hindu polyhistor of dubious caste. He had been writing for many years, still was and trusted he would be granted Prana to finish, a monograph provisionally entitled:
The Pathetic Fallacy from Avercamp to Kampendonck
. But already he began to complain of those sensations that some weeks later, just as he stumbled on the Norwich School for the first time, were to drive him to the gas-oven. ‘My fut,’ he had said to Miss Counihan, ‘’ave gut smaller than the end of the needle.’ And again: ‘I want to be up in the air.’

Then Miss Counihan had to be free to twist Wylie and this was perhaps her best reason for keeping him at a distance. She bribed and browbeat Cooper into reporting to her at the end of every day before he did so to Wylie; and directed by Cooper she went to Neary behind Wylie’s back and made a clean breast of the whole situation. 

Wylie protested bitterly against this cruel treatment, which suited him down to the muck. For Miss Counihan was not one of those delights peculiar to London, with which he proposed to indulge himself up to the hilt and the utmost limit of her
liberality
. It was only in Dublin, where the profession had gone to the dogs, that Miss Counihan could stand out as the object of desire of a man of taste. If Neary had not been cured of her by London, he was less than a man, or more than a saint. Turf is compulsory in the Saorstat, but one need not bring a private supply to Newcastle.

His other reason for satisfaction with the turn events had taken, or been so kindly given by Miss Counihan, was of course the same as hers, namely, that he could now double-cross her in perfect comfort and security. He browbeat Cooper (but did not bribe him) into reporting to him at the end of every day before he did so to Miss Counihan; and directed by Cooper he went to Neary behind Miss Counihan’s back and made a clean breast of the whole situation that was the complement of hers.

Such were the chief grounds for the partition, which was not however so inflexible that they could not contrive, now and then after supper, to meet on neutral ground and compare notes and ruts.

Cooper experienced none of the famous difficulty in serving two employers. He neither clave nor despised. A lesser man would have sided with one or the other, a bigger blackmailed both. But Cooper was the perfect size for the servant so long as he kept off the bottle and he moved incorruptible between his corruptors with the beautiful indifference of a shuttle, without infamy and without praise. To each he made a full and frank report, ignoring the emendations of the other; and made it first to whichever of the two was more convenient to the point at which dusk surprised him.

He did not try to reinstate himself with Neary, feeling it might be wiser to wait till Neary sent for him. He also felt a shade less wretched as the coadjutor of a pair of twisters, who not only knew next to nothing about him but seemed in a fair 
way to being as crapulous as himself, than as the catspaw of a hardened toff, who knew all, including much that he himself had contrived to forget. Did it perhaps mark the beginning, this slight loss of misery, of that fuller life that Wylie had
dangled
before him in Dublin? ‘In a short time you will be sitting down and taking off your hat and doing all the things that are impossible at present …’ Cooper thought it unlikely.

The relief to Neary was so great that he relaxed and went to bed, vowing not to get up till news of Murphy should be brought to him. He wrote to Miss Counihan:

‘I can never forget your loyalty. One person at least I can trust. Keep Judas Wylie on your hands. Tell Cooper he serves me in serving you. Come when you have news of Murphy, not before. It is too painful. Then you shall not find me ungrateful.’

And to Wylie:

‘I can never forget your loyalty. You at least will not betray me. Tell Cooper your favour is mine. Keep Jezabel Counihan on your hands. Come again when Murphy is found, not before. It is too trying. Then you shall find me not ungrateful.’

Neary was indeed cured of Miss Counihan, as completely and finally as though she had bowed, in the manner of Miss Dwyer, to his wishes; but by means very different from those to which Wylie had responded so splendidly. In Wylie’s case, properly speaking, it was less a matter of cure than of convalescence. For Miss Counihan had already been bowing, or rather nodding, to his wishes, or rather whims, for long enough to make further homeopathy unnecessary.

It is curious how Wylie’s words remained fixed in the minds of those to whom they had once been addressed. It must have been the tone of voice. Cooper, whose memory for such things was really very poor, had recovered, word for word, the merest of mere phrases. And now Neary lay on his bed, repeating: ‘The syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech’s daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.’ 

He thought of his latest
voltefesses
, at once so pleasant and so painful. Pleasant, in that Miss Counihan had been eased; painful, in that Murphy had been made worse;
fesses
, as being the part best qualified by nature not only to be kicked but also to mock the kicker, a paradox strikingly illustrated by Socrates, when he turned up the tail of his abolla at the trees.

Was his need any less for the sudden transformation of Murphy from the key that would open Miss Counihan to the one and only earthly hope of friendship and all that friendship carried with it? (Neary’s conception of friendship was very
curious
. He expected it to last. He never said, when speaking of an enemy: ‘He used to be a friend of mine’, but always, with affected precision: ‘I used to think he was a friend of mine.’) Was his need any less? It felt greater, but might well be the same. ‘The advantage of this view is, that while one may not look forward to things getting any better, at least one need not fear their getting any worse. They will always be the same as they always were.’

He writhed on his back in the bed, yearning for Murphy as though he had never yearned for anything or anyone before. He turned over and buried his face in the pillow, folding up its wings till they met at the back of his neck, and could not but remark how pleasant it was to feel for a change the weight of his bottom on his belly after so many hours of the converse
distribution
. But keeping his head resolutely buried and enveloped he groaned: ‘
Le pou est mort. Vive le pou!
’ And a little later, being by then almost stifled: ‘Is there no flea that found at last dies without issue? No keyflea?’

It was from just this consideration that Murphy, while still less than a child, had set out to capture himself, not with anger but with love. This was a stroke of genius that Neary, a Newtonian, could never have dealt himself nor suffered another to deal him. There seems really very little hope for Neary, he seems doomed to hope unending. He has something of Hugo. The fire will not depart from his eye, nor the water from his mouth, as he scratches himself out of one itch into the 
next, until he shed his mortal mange, supposing that to be permitted.

Murphy then is actually being needed by five people outside himself. By Celia, because she loves him. By Neary, because he thinks of him as the Friend at last. By Miss Counihan, because she wants a surgeon. By Cooper, because he is being employed to that end. By Wylie, because he is reconciled to doing Miss Counihan the honour, in the not too distant future, of becoming her
husband
. Not only did she stand out in Dublin and in Cork as quite exceptionally anthropoid, but she had private means.

Note that of all these reasons love alone did not splutter towards its end. Not because it was Love, but because there were no means at its disposal. When its end had been Murphy transfigured and transformed, happily caught up in some salaried routine, means had not been lacking. Now that its end was Murphy at any price, in whatsoever shape or form, so long as he was lovable, i.e. present in person, means were lacking, as Murphy had warned her they would be. Women are really extraordinary, the way they want to give their cake to the cat and have it. They never quite kill the thing they think they love, lest their instinct for artificial respiration should go abegging.

As Gower Street was more convenient to Brewery Road than was Earl’s Court, where Wylie had found a sitting-bedroom, it was to Miss Counihan that Cooper first hastened with the news that Murphy’s woman had been run to earth at last, and the astute comment that where a man’s woman was, there it was only a question of time before that man would be also.

‘Who says she is his woman?’ hissed Miss Counihan. ‘Describe the bitch.’

Cooper with sure instinct took refuge in the dusk, the suspense, the distance he had had to keep, the posterior aspect (surely a very thin excuse), and so on. For of the infinite criticisms of Murphy’s woman that could have been devised, from loathing to enthusiasm, there was not one but must have caused Miss Counihan pain. Because either a drab had been 
preferred to her, or else a woman more exquisite than herself existed, either of which was a proposition too painful to be borne in the mouth of a man, even though that man were only Cooper.

‘Not a word to a soul,’ said Miss Counihan. ‘What number again in Brewery Road did you say? Remember it has been just another blank day. Here is a florin I believe.’

She unpinned and unbuttoned herself as she spoke. Clearly she was in a great hurry to get off her things. She never reflected, to give her her due, that Cooper for all his shortcomings was a man like other men, with passions just like theirs, namely made to fit hers.

‘And to-morrow,’ she said, stepping out of her step-ins, ‘you set off in the morning as usual, but not to look for Murphy – here, damn it, I will make it half a crown – but to look for Mrs. Neary. Mrs. Neary,’ she repeated an octave higher, ‘Ariadne bloody Neary, misbegotten Cox, more pippin than orange no doubt, though personally,’ with a sigh and milder voice snapping open her corset, ‘I have nothing against the poor wretch, unless you hear to the contrary.’

The interview with Wylie was less trying to Cooper, and less lucrative, for Wylie was at the end of his resources, until he should see Miss Counihan again.

Wylie’s mind belonged to the same great group as Miss Counihan’s.

‘Drop Murphy,’ he said, ‘forget him and get after the Cox.’

Cooper waited for the rest, but Wylie put on his hat and coat, said, ‘After you, Cooper’, then not another word till in the street, ‘How do you go now, Cooper?’

Cooper had not given this a thought. He indicated a direction at a venture.

‘Then I’ll be saying good night, Cooper,’ said Wylie. But after a few paces he pulled up with the air of one who suddenly remembers, stood stock still for a second and then turned back to where Cooper, neither impatient nor amused, was waiting.

‘I nearly forgot to say,’ he said, ‘that when you see Miss Counihan – you will be seeing her now, won’t you, Cooper?’ 

The skill is really extraordinary with which analphabetes, especially those of Irish education, circumvent their dread of verbal commitments. Now Cooper’s face, though it did not seem to move a muscle, brought together and threw off in a
single
grimace the finest shades of irresolution, revulsion, doglike devotion, catlike discretion, fatigue, hunger, thirst and reserves of strength, in a very small fraction of the time that the finest oratory would require for a greatly inferior evasion, and without exposing its proprietor to misquotation.

‘Don’t I know,’ said Wylie. ‘But just in case you should, remember there is nothing new, not a thing to report. You know what women are when it comes to women.’

If Cooper did not possess this knowledge it was not for lack of an occasion, a melancholy occasion, of which perhaps the most regrettable result was this, that of the only two good angels he had ever been able to care for, simultaneously as ill luck would have it, the one, a Miss A, then a brunette, was now in her seventeenth year of His Majesty’s pleasure, while the other, a Miss B, also formerly a brunette, had not yet succumbed to her injuries. Yet properly speaking the knowledge was not his, it was not present to him as an everyday precaution as it was to Wylie, and to Neary, and indeed to most men, though they gain it at far less cost, and even in some cases
a priori
. For the bitter blow was one of those referred to above, forgotten almost entirely at great pains by Cooper and at scarcely less pains almost in its entirety reconstructed by Neary. What the former could still recall, because it did not pain him, and the latter had never known, because it did not interest him, was the merest scene of
tenderness
or two, with Miss A before he met Miss B, and again with Miss B before she met Miss A.

‘I say you know what women are,’ said Wylie impatiently, ‘or has your entire life been spent in Cork?’

Cooper’s head toppled forward and his hands, small, white, numb, sodden, hairless, but actually quite dexterous, toiled up a little through the dark. He said:

‘That’ll be all right.’