Murphy (4 page)

She stormed away from the callbox, accompanied delightedly by her hips, etc. The fiery darts encompassing her about of the amorously disposed were quenched as tow. She entered the saloon bar of a Chef and Brewer and had a sandwich of prawn and tomato and a dock glass of white port off the zinc. She then made her way rapidly on foot, followed by four football pool
collectors
at four shillings in the pound commission, to the
apartment
in Tyburnia of her paternal grandfather, Mr. Willoughby 
Kelly. She kept nothing from Mr. Kelly except what she thought might give him pain, i.e. next to nothing.

She had left Ireland at the age of four.

Mr. Kelly’s face was narrow and profoundly seamed with a lifetime of dingy, stingy repose. Just as all hope seemed lost it burst into a fine bulb of skull, unobscured by hair. Yet a little while and his brain-body ratio would have sunk to that of a small bird. He lay back in bed, doing nothing, unless an occasional pluck at the counterpane be entered to this credit.

‘You are all I have in the world,’ said Celia.

Mr. Kelly nestled.

‘You,’ said Celia, ‘and possibly Murphy.’

Mr. Kelly started up in the bed. His eyes could not very well protrude, so deeply were they imbedded, but they could open, and this they did.

‘I have not spoken to you of Murphy,’ said Celia, ‘because I thought it might give you pain.’

‘Pain my rump,’ said Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly fell back in the bed, which closed his eyes, as though he were a doll. He desired Celia to sit down, but she preferred to pace to and fro, clasping and unclasping her hands, in the usual manner. The friendship of a pair of hands.

Celia’s account, expurgated, accelerated, improved and reduced, of how she came to have to speak of Murphy, gives the following.

When her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Quentin Kelly died, which they did clinging warmly to their respective partners in the
ill-fated
Morro Castle
, Celia, being an only child, went on the street. While this was a step to which Mr. Willoughby Kelly could not whole-heartedly subscribe, yet he did not attempt to dissuade her. She was a good girl, she would do well.

It was on the street, the previous midsummer’s night, the sun being then in the Crab, that she met Murphy. She had turned out of Edith Grove into Cremorne Road, intending to refresh herself with a smell of the Reach and then return by Lot’s Road, when chancing to glance to her right she saw, motionless in the 
mouth of Stadium Street, considering alternately the sky and a sheet of paper, a man. Murphy.

‘But I beseech you,’ said Mr. Kelly, ‘be less beastly
circumstantial
. The junction for example of Edith Grove, Cremorne Road and Stadium Street, is indifferent to me. Get up to your man.’

She halted – ‘Get away!’ said Mr. Kelly – set herself off in the line that his eyes must take on their next declension and waited. When his head moved at last, it was to fall with such abandon on his breast that he caught and lost sight of her simultaneously. He did not immediately hoist it back to the level at which she could be assessed in comfort, but occupied himself with his sheet. If on his eyes’ way back to the eternities she were still in position, he would bid them stay and assess her.

‘How do you know all this?’ said Mr. Kelly.

‘What?’ said Celia.

‘All these demented particulars,’ said Mr. Kelly.

‘He tells me everything,’ said Celia.

‘Lay off them,’ said Mr. Kelly. ‘Get up to your man.’

When Murphy had found what he sought on the sheet he despatched his head on its upward journey. Clearly the effort was considerable. A little short of half way, grateful for the breather, he arrested the movement and gazed at Celia. For perhaps two minutes she suffered this gladly, then with outstretched arms began slowly to rotate – ‘Brava!’ said Mr. Kelly – like the Roussel dummy in Regent Street. When she came full circle she found, as she had fully expected, the eyes of Murphy still open and upon her. But almost at once they closed, as for a supreme exertion, the jaws clenched, the chin jutted, the knees sagged, the hypogastrium came forward, the mouth opened, the head tilted slowly back. Murphy was returning to the brightness of the firmament.

Celia’s course was clear: the water. The temptation to enter it was strong, but she set it aside. There would be time for that. She walked to a point about half-way between the Battersea and Albert Bridges and sat down on a bench between a Chelsea pensioner and an Eldorado hokey-pokey man, who had dismounted from 
his cruel machine and was enjoying a short interlude in paradise. Artists of every kind, writers, underwriters, devils, ghosts,
columnists
, musicians, lyricists, organists, painters and decorators, sculptors and statuaries, critics and reviewers, major and minor, drunk and sober, laughing and crying, in schools and singly, passed up and down. A flotilla of barges, heaped high with waste paper of many colours, riding at anchor or aground on the mud, waved to her from across the water. A funnel vailed to Battersea Bridge. A tug and barge, coupled abreast, foamed happily out of the Reach. The Eldorado man slept in a heap, the Chelsea pensioner tore at his scarlet tunic, exclaiming: ‘Hell roast this weather, I shill niver fergit it.’ The clock of Chelsea Old Church ground out grudgingly the hour of ten. Celia rose and walked back the way she had come. But instead of keeping straight on into Lot’s Road, as she had hoped, she found herself dragged to the right into Cremorne Road. He was still in the mouth of Stadium Street, in a modified attitude.

‘Hell roast this story,’ said Mr. Kelly, ‘I shall never
remember
it.’

Murphy had crossed his legs, pocketed his hands, dropped the sheet and was staring straight before him. Celia now accosted him in form – ‘Wretched girl!’ said Mr. Kelly – whereupon they walked off happily arm-in-arm, leaving the star chart for June lying in the gutter.

‘This is where we put on the light,’ said Mr. Kelly.

Celia put on the light and turned Mr. Kelly’s pillows.

From that time forward they were indispensable the one to the other.

‘Hey!’ exclaimed Mr. Kelly, ‘don’t skip about like that, will you? You walked away happily arm-in-arm. What
happened
then?’

Celia loved Murphy, Murphy loved Celia, it was a striking case of love requited. It dated from that first long lingering look exchanged in the mouth of Stadium Street, not from their
walking
away arm-in-arm nor any subsequent accident. It was the condition of their walking away, etc., as Murphy had shown her 
many times in Barbara, Baccardi and Baroko, though never in Bramantip. Every moment that Celia spent away from Murphy seemed an eternity devoid of significance, and Murphy for his part expressed the same thought if possible more strongly in the words: ‘What is my life now but Celia?’

On the following Sunday, the moon being at conjunction, he proposed to her in the Battersea Park sub-tropical garden, immediately following the ringing of the bell.

Mr. Kelly groaned.

Celia accepted.

‘Wretched girl,’ said Mr. Kelly, ‘most wretched.’

Resting on Campanella’s
City of the Sun
, Murphy said they must get married by hook or by crook before the moon came into opposition. Now it was September, the sun was back in the Virgin, and their relationship had not yet been regularised.

Mr. Kelly saw no reason why he should contain himself any longer. He started up in the bed, which opened his eyes, as he knew perfectly well it would, and wanted to know the who, what, where, by what means, why, in what way and when. Scratch an old man and find a Quintilian.

‘Who is this Murphy,’ he cried, ‘for whom you have been neglecting your work, as I presume? What is he? Where does he come from? What is his family? What does he do? Has he any money? Has he any prospects? Has he any retrospects? Is he, has he, anything at all?’

Taking the first point first, Celia replied that Murphy was Murphy. Continuing then in an orderly manner she revealed that he belonged to no profession or trade; came from Dublin – ‘My God!’ said Mr. Kelly – knew of one uncle, a Mr. Quigley, a well-to-do ne’er-do-well, resident in Holland, with whom he strove to correspond; did nothing that she could discern; sometimes had the price of a concert; believed that the future held great things in store for him; and never ripped up old stories. He was Murphy. He had Celia.

Mr. Kelly mustered all his hormones.

‘What does he live on?’ he shrieked. 

‘Small charitable sums,’ said Celia.

Mr. Kelly fell back. His bolt was shot. The heavens were free to fall.

Celia now came to that part of her relation which she rather despaired of explaining to Mr. Kelly, because she did not properly understand it herself. She knew that if by any means she could insert the problem into that immense cerebrum, the solution would be returned as though by clockwork. Pacing to and fro at a slightly faster rate, racking her brain which was not very large for the best way to say it, she felt she had come to an even more crucial junction in her affairs than that composed by Edith Grove, Cremorne Road and Stadium Street.

‘You are all I have in the world,’ she said.

‘I,’ said Mr. Kelly, ‘and possibly Murphy.’

‘There is no one else in the world,’ said Celia, ‘least of all Murphy, that I could speak to of this.’

‘You mollify me,’ said Mr. Kelly.

Celia halted, raised her clasped hands though she knew his eyes were closed and said:

‘Will you please pay attention to this, tell me what it means and what I am to do?’

‘Stop!’ said Mr. Kelly. His attention could not be mobilised like that at a moment’s notice. His attention was dispersed. Part was with its caecum, which was wagging its tail again; part with his extremities, which were dragging anchor; part with his boyhood; and so on. All this would have to be called in. When he felt enough had been scraped together he said:

‘Go!’

Celia spent every penny she earned and Murphy earned no pennies. His honourable independence was based on an
understanding
with his landlady, in pursuance of which she sent exquisitely cooked accounts to Mr. Quigley and handed over the difference, less a reasonable commission, to Murphy. This superb arrangement enabled him to consume away at pretty well his own gait, but was inadequate for a domestic establishment, no matter how frugal. The position was further complicated by 
the shadows of a clearance area having fallen, not so much on Murphy’s abode as on Murphy’s landlady. And it was certain that the least appeal to Mr. Quigley would be severely punished. ‘Shall I bite the hand that starves me,’ said Murphy, ‘to have it throttle me?’

Surely between them they could contrive to earn a little. Murphy thought so, with a look of such filthy intelligence as left her, self-aghast, needing him still. Murphy’s respect for the imponderables of personality was profound, he took the
miscarriage
of his tribute very nicely. If she felt she could not, why then she could not, and that was all. Liberal to a fault, that was Murphy.

‘So far I keep abreast,’ said Mr. Kelly. ‘There is just this tribute—’

‘I have tried so hard to understand that,’ said Celia.

‘But what makes you think a tribute was intended?’ said Mr. Kelly.

‘I tell you he keeps nothing from me,’ said Celia.

‘Did it go something like this?’ said Mr. Kelly. ‘“I pay you the highest tribute that a man can pay a woman, and you throw a scene.”’

‘Hark to the wind,’ said Celia.

‘Damn your eyes,’ said Mr. Kelly, ‘did he or didn’t he?’

‘It’s not a bad guess,’ said Celia.

‘Guess my rump,’ said Mr. Kelly. ‘It is the formula.’

‘So long as one of us understands,’ said Celia. In respecting what he called the Archeus, Murphy did no more than as he would be done by. He was consequently aggrieved when Celia suggested that he might try his hand at something more
remunerative
than apperceiving himself into a glorious grave and checking the starry concave, and would not take the anguish on his face for an answer. ‘Did I press you?’ he said. ‘No. Do you press me? Yes. Is that equitable? My sweet.’

‘Will you conclude now as rapidly as possible,’ said Mr. Kelly. ‘I weary of Murphy.’

He begged her to believe him when he said he could not earn. Had he not already sunk a small fortune in attempts to do so? 
He begged her to believe that he was a chronic emeritus. But it was not altogether a question of economy. There were metaphysical considerations, in whose gloom it appeared that the night had come in which no Murphy could work. Was Ixion under any contract to keep his wheel in nice running order? Had any provision been made for Tantalus to eat salt? Not that Murphy had ever heard of.

‘But we cannot go on without any money,’ said Celia.