Strumpet City

CHAPTER SEVEN

On Easter Tuesday evening Mary and Fitz moved into 3 Chandlers Court. Their feet on the unfamiliar stairs made an echoing noise and they had to pick their way carefully until a figure holding an oil lamp appeared on the landing above them and addressed her for the first time as Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

‘This is Mrs. Mulhall,’ Fitz introduced.

‘I’ve taken the liberty of laying down a bit of a fire,’ Mrs. Mulhall explained. ‘I thought it would make the room cosy.’

The elderly woman before her looked quiet-natured and good-hearted. There would be a new life, with new friends.

‘You’ll come over later?’ Mary invited.

‘For a little while,’ Mrs. Mulhall agreed, ‘when you’re both rested.’

The living room was bare except for a table, a cupboard, some chairs and a long couch Fitz had bought and repaired in his spare evenings.

They drew this over to the fire.

‘It’s a bit bare, isn’t it?’ Fitz said.

‘It’s home.’

They sat down. The fire in the half-light cast friendly shadows. It was theirs, at least. There would be no more partings, no more reluctant goodbyes, no more being the only person in the whole world. On impulse she kissed Fitz, surprising him. He knew something had moved her deeply and said:

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I thought of a lonely old woman.’

‘Who?’

‘Miss Gilchrist. I wonder if she is still with Mrs. Bradshaw.’

‘What made you think of her?’

‘Just before I left them she was sick and I often sat in front of the fire in her room. She told me to stick to service.’

‘Why did she want you to do that?’

Mary smiled. ‘I think she loved someone years and years ago. And because she never married she consoled herself that being in service in a good house was the best thing, after all.’

‘Have you missed it?’

‘What was there to miss?’

‘Practically everything people fight each other for: good food and comfortable houses.’

Mary looked about her at the room.

‘I think I like this place better.’

‘The pay isn’t quite so good,’ Fitz said.

Mary smiled and said:

‘The duties are lighter.’

‘That’s true. Not so much silver to be polished.’

‘And the meals won’t be such a problem.’

‘No.’

‘But I’ll make up by brushing your clothes every morning.’

‘That won’t be much of a problem either.’

‘Then I’ll mend your broken socks.’

‘That might take longer.’

‘And answer the door.’

‘That seems to settle everything.’

‘You’re satisfied?’

He took her in his arms.

‘How long are you likely to stay?’

‘Until I’m as old as Miss Gilchrist,’ she answered.

After a while he released her and she rose, made a paper spill and began to light the lamp. He watched her. She removed the globe, trimmed the wick and touched it with the flame. Then she replaced the globe. He wondered, as she leaned over to set the lamp on the table, how often in the course of their life together she would go through the same routine. How often would he sit and admire without speaking her dark hair showing its lustre in the lamplight and worship her face that was fine-boned and beautiful. It made him sad to have so little to offer to her, to think even that little should be so insecure.

‘Your friend Pat is comical,’ he heard her saying. Fitz noticed that they had reversed moods and thought of the two figures on some novelty clocks he had seen in Moore Street. When one came out the other went in; he remembered from childhood that they were fine-weather-and-foul-weather-never-seen-together.

‘He has great heart,’ he agreed.

Pat had acted as best man. He paid for a cab from the church to the Farrells’ cottage and after breakfast he had pressed a sovereign into Fitz’s hand. Fitz, wondering at his sudden wealth, guessed that he had had a stroke of unusually good luck at the horses. But he had found no opportunity to ask.

‘Is he wild?’ Mary asked.

‘A bachelor and fancy free.’

‘He seemed to have plenty of money.’

It’s some windfall or other,’ Fitz said, ‘most of the time he hasn’t a cigarette.’

‘He needs a woman’s hand,’ Mary said. ‘You’d think he’d have a girl friend.’

‘He has,’ Fitz said. And then, as an afterthought he added, ‘A sort of a one.’

‘Who is she?’

‘A girl named Lily Maxwell. When Pat knocks himself about in a spree he usually ends up in her room. She looks after him.’

At eight o’clock the Mulhalls arrived and by nine they had been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Farrell. Joe came later and later still Pat surprised them by arriving in presentable shape. He had a heavy parcel which he immediately deposited in a corner, and a bottle of whiskey which he pressed into Fitz’s hands.

‘There’s my welcome,’ he whispered. The local publican had loaned glasses. Fitz offered port to the women. The men played their expected part by pressing them and coaxing them. Mrs. Farrell gave in first, remarking that she would be a long time dead. Mrs. Mulhall also agreed, on condition that Mary did likewise. When everybody had a full glass Pat proposed the toast of the bride and groom and after that there was no further reluctance.

An hour later Rashers paused on the steps and looked up at the lighted windows. Pat’s voice drifted into the dark street, his song winding past gas-lamps and growing faint and being swallowed altogether in other sounds. He was singing ‘Comrades’.

‘Comrades, comrades ever since we were boys

Sharing each other’s troubles, sharing each other’s joys.’

Rashers, conscious suddenly of the emptiness of the street, looked down sadly at his dog and petted it before going in. Mrs. Mulhall, troubled by some memory or other, wept a little as she listened.

‘That was lovely,’ she said, when Pat had finished.

‘Hasn’t he a grand voice altogether,’ Mrs. Farrell remarked.

‘He’d draw tears from a glass eye,’ Joe said.

‘A few bars from yourself, ma’am,’ Pat invited. But Mrs. Mulhall said she had no voice.

‘You’ve voice enough when it comes to giving out the pay to me,’ Mulhall assured her.

Everybody took a hand in encouraging her and at last she gave in and began to sing ‘If I were a Blackbird’. Her voice was thin and had a quiver in it, but Mulhall regarded her with a proud look. They were a kindly couple, Fitz thought, unbroken by hardship. He hoped he would reach Mulhall’s age with as much of his courage and his world intact.

When the song finished Fitz raised his glass and said: ‘Here’s to ninepence an hour.’

Mulhall, delighted, repeated ‘Ninepence an hour’ and drank.

‘How is it going?’ Farrell asked.

‘They’re marking time,’ Pat said. He was elaborately complacent.

‘Larkin wrote and said we won’t deliver to the foundry,’ Mulhall explained. ‘We’ve heard nothing more since.’

‘They haven’t paid,’ Joe put in.

‘Any day now they’ll load us and tell us to deliver to the foundry. We’ll all refuse.’

‘Amen,’ Pat said.

‘If they lock you out we’ll stand by you on the quays,’ Farrell said.

‘I wonder,’ Mulhall said, challenging him.

‘It’s a certainty,’ Farrell assured him.

‘That’s worth drinking to,’ Pat declared.

‘I’m sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick doesn’t want to begin married life with a session about strikes,’ Mrs. Farrell protested.

‘I’m not listening,’ Mary said lightly.

She was making tea. There was something about her which set her apart from the others, a way of moving, of lifting things, of using her features and varying her intonation when she spoke.

‘That’s the proper way to treat them,’ Mrs. Farrell agreed, ‘don’t listen.’

The women were having tea and cake when Hennessy tapped at the door. Fitz invited him in. He stood uncertainly and said to Mrs. Mulhall:

‘I was knocking at your room, ma’am, this while back. Then I chanced to hear the voices and guessed you might be here.’

Is there something I can get you?’

‘Herself was wondering if you’d oblige her with the loan of a cup of sugar.’

Mrs. Mulhall rose, but Fitz looked at Mary and she went to the cupboard.

‘I hesitate to trouble you . . .’ Hennessy protested.

‘We have it to spare,’ Mary assured him.

Fitz invited Hennessy to drink and he sat down.

‘My respects and wishes for a long and happy life,’ he toasted.

‘How is the work with you?’ Mulhall asked.

‘Not too bad,’ Hennessy said. ‘I’ve landed a bit of a watching job. Three nights a week.’

‘You’re a great man at the watching.’

‘I’ve a natural gift for it,’ Hennessy said. Then he added: ‘I suppose you all heard about Rashers and his stroke of fortune?’

‘What was that?’

‘He swears he owes it all to yourself, ma’am.’

Mary, finding the voice directed at her, put down the cup of sugar.

‘The night of poor Hanlon’s funeral he showed the two of you the way to the presbytery and on the road out he dropped in to say a few prayers. He met the curate and landed the boilerman’s job. Ten bob a week. Wasn’t that a stroke of good fortune?’

‘It’s only seasonal,’ Joe said.

‘It’ll keep him going through the winter.’

‘Ten bob is a scab rate,’ Pat said, with disgust.

Mary said: ‘The curate is Father O’Connor. I knew him in Kingstown.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Hennessy said, happy to gather a further piece of information.

Pat, with obvious satisfaction, remarked: ‘St. Brigid’s must be a bit of a change for him.’

‘It was his own wish to work here,’ Mary said.

‘Imagine that now.’ Hennessy was greatly impressed.

‘Only a saintly soul would make such a change,’ Mrs. Mulhall said.

‘Every man to his taste,’ Pat said.

Hennessy noted there was full and plenty and lingered. He accepted a second drink and agreed to sing a song. Later he recited a ballad about a young man who gambled away his inheritance and died all alone in the Australian bush, where he was found with a locket in his hand containing a lock of golden hair. Was it his own, a relic of the lost innocence of his childhood or had it been cut from a sweetheart’s golden hair before sin sullied the hopes of youth? Or was it, perhaps, a sweet mother’s tresses, carried to the ends of the earth by an erring son and fondled with remorse when Death laid its chill hand on his brow? The poet was unable to say and Hennessy, having posed the question and moved everybody by the light, nasal style of his recital, let his eye rest on the cup of sugar and suddenly remembered his wife.

‘She’ll think I’m lost,’ he said, springing to his feet.

‘That’s the greatest oddity in Dublin,’ Mulhall remarked.

‘He has the gift, mind you,’ Joe said. The rest had been equally impressed and agreed with him.

Mrs. Mulhall, thinking of the peaky face with its short moustache and small chin, and the far-away look in the eyes during the recital, sighed and said: ‘The poor soul.’

‘I think it’s time we all went,’ Farrell suggested. He had a long walk home before him and a six o’clock start the next morning.

‘That’s a thought,’ Joe said.

They gathered their belongings and began to renew their wishes for happiness and good fortune. They were halfway down the stairs when Mary, who had gone back into the room to tidy up, noticed the parcel in the corner and called to Fitz.

Fitz shouted down the stairs: ‘Pat—your parcel.’

‘Never mind it.’

‘You’ve left it behind you.’

Pat returned a little from the rest and said: It’s for herself—a bit of a wedding present. There’s no need to waken the house over it.’ He was gruff and embarrassed.

‘Did you rob a bank or something?’ Fitz said, smiling.

‘Never mind what I robbed,’ Pat said. He turned and went down to join the rest.

‘Thanks,’ Fitz shouted after him, but he got no reply and went in and closed the door.

Mary was still tidying. Already, he noticed, she had given the room a touch of home.

‘What was ninepence an hour?’ she asked, working busily.

‘I told you about it. The job I called Farrell for.’

‘The night I was asleep and you didn’t waken me?’

Something had happened to him that night that had nothing to do with their love. He remembered the sharp morning wind and, far off, the shouts of the men. Isolated in the top gallery of the house, just before the water pipes rattled into life, he had felt the inward drag of compassion and responsibility, linking him with the others below. Some part of him had become theirs. It was a moment he had no way of explaining to anybody, not even to Mary. He said, ‘It may mean trouble for us.’

‘But it’s so long ago.’

‘So far we’ve been able to keep going at the foundry by drawing from stock. But if the carters don’t deliver to us soon we’ll have to close down. And if non-union men deliver to us we’ll have to refuse to handle the coal.’

‘Maybe they’ll give in and pay them.’

‘That’s what we’re hoping for.’

She had finished her work and was removing her apron. He remembered.

‘The parcel Pat left is a wedding present.’ He took it from the corner and put it on the table. It was heavy. He unwrapped it. It was a marble clock, with the figure of a wolfhound on either side. The gilt on the hands had worn thin in places, but when they wound it and moved the hands it had a low, musical chime.

‘It’s lovely,’ Mary said. They set it on the mantelpiece and stood back to admire it.

It’s a bit on the elegant side for the rest of the room,’ Fitz said.

‘It’s beautiful.’ Her pleasure touched Fitz.

‘That’s two beautiful things to look at every day,’ he said.

‘I’m sure he spent a fortune on it, it’s too much to give.’

‘In a way it’s just as well,’ Fitz said, ‘he’ll have less to act the tin elephant with.’

‘Does he never try to save?’

‘He’d rather give it away.’

‘You have generous friends,’ Mary said. She stood back to look at it once more.

‘Let me hear it chime again,’ she asked.

Fitz moved the hands and the clock responded.

‘It has a happy sound,’ she pronounced.

Fitz took the lamp and they went into the bedroom together. They undressed. Everything had gone well: the ceremony, the breakfast, the afternoon expedition around Howth Head, the customary wedding party. They lay together in the darkness, two lovers in a dilapidated world, knowing each other for the first time. They were near enough to the river to hear, faintly, the siren of a ship. The city grew quiet. Before they slept the clock in the outer room chimed once again.

‘Listen to it,’ Mary whispered.

They listened together. Fitz covered her mouth with his. They forgot the clock and the plaintive siren and the house which was peopled above and below them.

Pat left the rest at Ringsend Bridge and watched them go down past the Catholic church. Its back wall overhung the Dodder. From the bridge he saw the masts of the sailing ships that lay close against the church. They had a derelict look. The water about them gleamed faintly, gathering what light reached it from the few, scattered stars. The stars had a misty look of imminent rain. Under the great hump of the bridge the river, already swollen, moved towards the intricate system of docks and canals which would conduct it deviously to the Liffey and so to the sea. The breeze carried the taint of salt water, a forlorn smell.

As he walked back towards the city the rain began. It was late. The last trams were arriving at Ringsend Depot. They swung into the sheds with a great rattling and clanging, with trolleys that hissed and sparked as they crossed the wire intersections. They left a taste of metal in the street. Machinery vibrated behind the grey walls of Boland’s Mills, and the little, lighted cabin of the overhead telpher made a blurred circle above the foundry yard before it disappeared into the awning of one of the furnace houses. Pat turned into Townsend Street and crossed Butt Bridge. The rain began to seep through his clothes. He had been sharing with Fritz and had neglected to make provision for a bed now that the arrangement had come to an end. But he was contented with drink. He knew what he was going to do.

In the shelter of Amiens Street Bridge he uncorked a bottle of whiskey, drank and went on. The streets were badly surfaced. Already muddy pools were beginning to form. There were lights in occasional windows and once he heard a piano playing

‘For in his bloom

He met his doom

Tim Kelly’s early grave.’

A policeman with his cloak fully buttoned and the great collar covering his ears turned to stare at him as he passed. Pat went on, changing the song.

‘O girl of my heart you are waiting for me

Mora, my own love

Mora, my true love

Will you be mine through the long years to be?’

He turned into a narrower, muddier street and climbed the stairs, still singing, his boots and his voice making a rowdy din. Someone jerked open a door.

‘I thought so,’ Lily Maxwell cried.

‘Lily, my own.’

‘Come in out of that,’ she grumbled at him.

‘Lily, my true love.’

‘Do you want to bring the whole bloody Metropolitan Constabulary in on top of me?’ she shouted at him.

Pat held out his arms to her and begged, ‘Will you be mine through the long years to be?’

She pushed him in and closed the door.

‘Will you look at the cut of him?’ she said, appealing to one of the pictures on the wall.

Water was running from his hat. His coat was sodden and shapeless. She took it off him. She sat him down at the fire. Lily’s room was small. An enormous iron bed with brass fittings took up most of the floor space. The fireplace, which was deep, was well filled with glowing coals, in spite of the general shortage. Lily had friends among the humble. Intimate garments were scattered haphazardly, as though Lily had been unable to make up her mind about what she was going to wear and had given it up.

‘I was at a wedding,’ Pat explained.

‘You needn’t tell me. I can smell the confetti,’ Lily said.

‘We’ll have a drink.’

‘Not any of mine, you won’t,’ Lily assured him, ‘it’s strictly for the paying guests.’

Pat produced the bottle of whiskey.

‘Out of this, Lily my own love.’

She took it. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘I bought it.’

Lily looked astounded. ‘There’ll be a blue moon tomorrow night.’

‘Will you pour the drink and not have so much bloody oul guff,’ Pat said.

The steam was rising from his trousers.

‘Take them off you,’ Lily advised.

‘Don’t be impatient.’

‘You’re full of smart answers, wherever you were.’

‘I told you, I was at a wedding.’

‘I suppose they gave you this to get shut of you,’ she said, taking the cork from the bottle.

‘You never say anything agreeable to me,’ Pat complained. ‘All the time you keep nagging.’

He was taking off his trousers.

‘Here,’ she said, throwing him a towel. He began to dry his legs.

‘Nag, nag, nag.’

‘For all the good it does. Just look at you.’

She hung his wet trousers near the fire and handed him a drink.

‘You’re not bad, after all,’ he said, sampling the whiskey. ‘How is business?’

‘Bloody terrible,’ Lily said. ‘How would you expect it to be of an Easter Tuesday. They’re all after making their Easter duty. Finishing up their retreats and mending their souls.’

‘What about the Protestants?’

‘It seems this is a Roman Catholic area.’

‘The Army?’

‘On leave. Or blew it all of an Easter Monday.’

‘And the students?’

‘They only come to be seen, most of them.’

‘Lily—you shouldn’t be in this game. I told you so.’

‘Maisie persuaded me there would be good money in it. She exaggerates a bit, the same Maisie.’

‘Then don’t settle to it. Get out of it.’

‘Back to what? To making biscuits or something for five bob a week? I had enough of that, thank you.’

‘You’d be happier.’

‘I wasn’t any happier. I was bloody well miserable, if you want to know.’

She consoled herself with a long slug of whiskey. She was sitting opposite to him at the fire, a thin, dark-haired girl with a slight figure. She had small features and neat hands that Pat liked to touch. His own had broken nails from humping sacks and coal-dirt which had settled permanently in the pores. She got up and began to twist the ends of his trousers. A stream of water fell from them.

‘You’ll wind up with pneumonia,’ she said.

‘I have money, Lily.’

‘That’s two blue moons tomorrow.’

‘The horses,’ Pat said. ‘Give me another drink and I’ll tell you about it.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Lily said. But she gave him the drink. While she squeezed his trousers she said to him: ‘Are you not staying?’

He had been about to tell her the story of his luck. Her remark surprised him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You could take off your hat,’ she said. He groped and was surprised to find it poised on the back of his head. He dropped it at his feet.

‘I brought off a sixpenny treble at Fairyhouse: Axle Pin at sevens in the Farmers Plate, Lord Rivers in the Irish National at tens and all on to Little Hack the Second in the King’s Cup. He came up at sevens.’

‘What did you make?’

‘Fifteen pounds eight shillings,’ Pat said.

‘Out of sixpence?’ Lily asked.

‘Out of a little crooked sixpence,’ Pat said. He found it hard to believe himself. He held his glass up in front of him and nodded his head at it several times.

‘What have you left?’ Lily asked.

‘Count it,’ Pat invited. ‘It’s in my back pocket.’ She took the trousers down and emptied the contents on to the table.

‘I declare to God!’ she exclaimed. She counted eight pounds and some odd shillings.

‘What happened to the rest?’

‘I bought a wedding present for five pounds. A clock.’

‘You should have your head examined with what’s left,’ Lily said, outraged.

‘It was for a friend,’ Pat said.

‘Who’s the friend?’

‘Bob Fitzpatrick. They were married this morning and after breakfast they went out to Howth.’

A thought struck him.

‘Were you ever in Howth, Lily?’

‘What would I be doing in Howth,’ Lily answered.

‘It’s a beautiful place. It sticks right out into the sea. You can see the whole Bay from the cliffs, and the Dublin mountains all around it.’

‘I was there once or twice,’ Lily said. ‘The cliffs made me dizzy.’

‘Then the gardens,’ Pat said, ‘with the dandderodents, the rhodadandins . . . what the hell do you call them . . . the flowers.’

‘I’ve seen them,’ Lily said, ‘but it must be years ago.’

‘Come with me tomorrow.’

‘Are you retiring from business?’

‘There may be a bit of a lock-out tomorrow.’

‘You’d better wait and see,’ Lily suggested sensibly.

‘Or the day after. Or the day after that again.’

‘Or next Christmas,’ Lily prompted. She saw he was full of drink.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Pat said, ‘hold four pounds out of that for me and we’ll go to Howth next Sunday.’

Lily took the four pounds.

‘I’ll keep it for you,’ she said.

‘If you have to spend some of it it’s all right. Give me another drink.’

‘You’re crooked already.’ But she poured it.

‘I’ve no bed for tonight.’

‘You can stay here. But no monkey business.’

‘You don’t love me any more,’ Pat accused.

‘I don’t love anyone any more,’ Lily said, suddenly weary. ‘I feel bloody awful.’

‘Have another drink.’

‘Two is enough. Any more kills me.’

This was unusual. Pat looked at her unbelievingly. Then he shrugged and said: ‘Please yourself.’ He began to take his own. The heat of the fire helped the effect of the alcohol. Lily was sitting opposite again. He was becoming drowsy and found it hard to keep her in focus. They had grown up together, played together, found out the usual things together. The boys liked Lily. She wandered around with them and when they dared her she stood on her hands for them. The boys shouted ‘I see Paris’ when her bloomers showed and the other girls tried to be scandalised. They both came from a world where very little ever remained to be known after the age of twelve or thirteen.

‘What’s the strike?’ Lily asked.

‘For a proper rate—three shillings.’

‘Three shillings a week?’

‘No—three shillings they owe us for overtime.’

‘A strike for three shillings?’

‘For principle.’

‘It takes a lot of principle to fill a pint,’ Lily said.

‘You never think of the world you live in, Lily,’ Pat said, ‘that’s what’s wrong with you.’

‘I know what’s wrong with me,’ Lily said, ‘but it isn’t that.’

‘You never ask yourself why the poor are poor. You see the quality going off to balls at the Castle and receptions in the Park. Will Lily Maxwell ever do that?’

‘I’d look well, wouldn’t I?’

‘You’d look as well as the next and better if you had their advantages.’

‘That’s the way God made the world,’ Lily said. ‘You’d better lodge your objections with Him, not with me. I have my own troubles.’

‘All that is going to be changed. We’ll have a revolution about that.’

Pat’s eyes were closing. Lily, watching the drunkenness slowly mastering his body and his thoughts, felt affection for him and asked: ‘Had you any definite date in mind?’

He opened his eyes and was puzzled. ‘What date?’

‘For all the changing you’re going to do.’

‘They’re going to lock us out. That’ll be a start.’

‘But no novelty,’ Lily said, thinking of the other strikes.

‘It’ll be changed. The expropriators are to be expropriated. Did you ever listen to that Connolly chap?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Come to think of it,’ Pat said, ‘I haven’t seen him around this past couple of years. He wanted votes for women. That’s something should interest you.’

‘What would I do with a vote?’ Lily asked.

‘Vote for the socialists. I’m a radical socialist. I believe we should hold everything in common, even our women.’

‘Is your friend Fitzpatrick a socialist?’

‘Fitz is all right. He’s going to stand by us.’

‘For your three shillings? He must be as mad as the rest of you.’

‘He’s the heart of the roll—the flower of the flock.’

‘Try holding his woman in common and see what happens,’ Lily invited. ‘God, that’s an explosion I’d love to watch!’

‘Give me another drink,’ Pat said.

‘If you go to bed,’ she promised.

He was agreeable. She helped him to undress. When he had stretched out beneath the covers she made an elaborate show of pouring whiskey into a glass. But she kept it in her hand while she sat at the bedside and made no move to give it to him.

‘It’s a bitch of a city, Lily,’ he said to her.

‘It’s no great shakes,’ Lily agreed.

‘More babies die in Dublin than anywhere else in Europe—did you know that, Lily?’

‘All babies die,’ Lily said, ‘when they reach the right age.’

‘More men and women too. Does the Lord Lieutenant care? No. Does the Government? Do the employers? Does God?’

‘I’d leave Him out of it,’ Lily said.

‘All right. Leave Him out of it. Do the others?’

‘You should go asleep.’

‘If you get in beside me.’

‘I told you there’s something wrong with me.’ She half shouted it at him.

‘Where’s my drink?’

‘I have it here for you.’ But she kept it in her hand.

‘Take Lord Aberdeen. Does he care?’

‘I’ll ask him the next time I bump into him,’ Lily said.

‘You haven’t got into bed, Lily.’

‘Take your hour, can’t you.’

She was watching him, watching the sleep stealing over and through him. She was reckoning the moment of its victory. His speech became thick and blurred.

‘We’re going to tear it all down,’ he said, ‘tear it all down. Like that.’

He tried to make a descriptive movement with his hands. They barely stirred. Lily looked at him for some time with lonely affection. She said: ‘You couldn’t tear down wallpaper.’ He was asleep. The stupor had won. He lay stretched with his mouth wide open. She drew the covers to his chin and bowed her head against the bulk of his body.

‘Jesus help me,’ she whispered. ‘Jesus help me.’ She was crying.