Murphy. Samuel Beckett
Neary besieged Miss Counihan with attentions, sending her mangoes, orchids, Cuban cigarettes and a passionately autographed copy of his tractate, The Doctrine of the Limit. If she did not acknowledge these gifts, at least she did not return them, so that Neary continued to hope. Finally she gave him a forenoon appointment at the grave of Father Prout (F. S. Mahony) in Shandon Churchyard, the one place in Cork she knew of where fresh air, privacy and immunity from assault were reconciled.
Neary arrived with a superb bunch of cattleyas, which on her arrival two hours later she took graciously from him and laid on the slab. She then made a statement designed to purge the unhappy man of such remaining designs on her person as he might happen to cherish.
She was set aside for Murphy, who had torn himself away to set up for his princess, in some less desolate quarter of the globe, a habitation meet for her. When he had done this he would come flying back to claim her. She had not heard from him since his departure, and therefore did not know where he was, or what exactly he was doing. This did not disquiet her, as he had explained before he left that to make good and love, were it only by letter, at one and the same time, was more than he could manage. Consequently he would not write until he had some tangible success to report. She would not inflict needless pain on Neary by enlarging on the nature of her feeling for Mr. Murphy, enough had been said to make it clear that she could not tolerate his propositions. If he were not gentleman enough to desist on his own bottom, she would have him legally restrained.
At this point Neary paused and buried his face in his hands.
“My poor friend,” said Wylie.
Neary reached forward with his hands across the marble top to Wylie, who seized them in an ecstasy of compassion and began to massage them. Neary closed his eyes. In vain. The human eyelid is not teartight (happily for the human eye). In the presence of such grief Wylie felt purer than at any time since his second communion.
“Do not tell me any more,” he said, “if it gives you so much pain.”
“Two in distress,” said Neary, “make sorrow less.”
To free the hand from sympathetic pressure is an operation requiring such an exquisite touch that Neary decided he had better not attempt it. The ruse he adopted so that Wylie might not be wounded was to beg for a cigarette. He went further, he suffered his cup to be replenished.
Miss Counihan, her statement concluded, turned to go. Neary sank on one knee, on both knees, and begged her to hear him in a voice so hoarse with anguish that she turned back.
“Mr. Neary,” she said, almost gently, “I am sorry if I have seemed to speak unfeelingly. Believe me, I have nothing against you personally. If I were not—er—disposed of, I might even learn to like you, Mr. Neary. But you must understand that I am not free to—er—do justice to your addresses. Try and forget me, Mr. Neary.”
Wylie rubbed his hands.
“Things are looking up,” he said.
Again she turned to go, again Neary stayed her, this time with the assurance that what he had to say concerned not himself but Murphy. He described the position in which that knight-errant had last been heard of
“London!” exclaimed Miss Counihan. “The Mecca of every young aspirant to fiscal distinction.”
This was a balloon that Neary quickly punctured, with a sketch of the phases through which the young aspirant in London had to pass before he could call himself an old suspirant. He then made what he would always regard as the greatest blunder of his career. He began to disparage Murphy.
That afternoon he shaved off his whiskers.
He did not see her again for nearly four months, when she knocked into him skilfully in the Mall. She looked ill (she was ill). It was August and still she had no news of Murphy. Was there no means of getting in touch with him. Neary, who had already gone deeply into this question, replied that he could not think of any. He seemed to have only one person belonging to him, a demented uncle who spent his time between Amsterdam and Scheveningen. Miss Counihan went on to say that she could not very well renounce a young man, such a nice young man, who for all she knew to the contrary was steadily amassing a large fortune so that she might not be without any of the little luxuries to which she was accustomed, and whom of course she loved very dearly, unless she had superlative reasons for doing, such for example as would flow from a legally attested certificate of his demise, a repudiation of her person under his own hand and seal, or overwhelming evidence of infidelity and economic failure. She welcomed the happy chance that allowed her to communicate this—er—modified view of the situation to Mr. Neary, looking so much more—er—youthful without his whiskers, on the very eve of her departure to Dublin, where Wynn’s Hotel would always find her.
The next morning Neary closed the Gymnasium, put a padlock on the Grove, sunk both keys in the Lee and boarded the first train for Dublin, accompanied by his âme damnée and man-of-all-work, Cooper.
Cooper’s only visible humane characteristic was a morbid craving for alcoholic depressant. So long as he could be kept off the bottle he was an invaluable servant. He was a low-sized, clean-shaven, grey-faced, one-eyed man, triorchous and a non-smoker. He had a curious hunted walk, like that of a destitute diabetic in a strange city. He never sat down and never took off his hat.
This ruthless tout was now launched in pursuit of Murphy, with the torpor in the Cockpit as the only clue. But many a poor wretch had been nailed by Cooper with very much less to work on. While Cooper was combing London, where he would stay at the usual stew, Neary would be working a line of his own in Dublin, where Wynn’s Hotel would always find him. When Cooper found Murphy, all he had to do was to notify Neary by wire.
A feature of Miss Counihan’s attitude to Neary had been the regularity of its alternation. Having shown herself cruel, kind, cruel and kind in turn, she could no more welcome his arrival at her hotel than green, yellow, green is a legitimate sequence of traffic lights.
Either he left the hotel or she did. He did, so that at least he might know whose were the happy beds and breakfasts. If he attempted to speak to her again before he had equipped himself with the—er—discharge papers aforesaid, she would send for the police.
Neary crawled to the nearest station doss. All depended now on Cooper. If Cooper failed him he would simply post himself early one morning outside her hotel and as soon as she came tripping down the steps take salts of lemon.
In the meantime there was little he could do. He began feebly to look for a thread that might lead him to Murphy among the nobility, tradesmen and gentry of that name in Dublin, but soon left off, appalled. He instructed the hall porter in Wynn’s to send any telegrams addressed to him from London across the street to Mooney’s, where he would always be found. There he sat all day, moving slowly from one stool to another until he had completed the circuit of the counters, when he would start all over again in the reverse direction. He did not speak to the curates, he did not drink the endless half-pints of porter that he had to buy, he did nothing but move slowly round the ring of counters, first in one direction, then in the other, thinking of Miss Counihan. When the house closed at night he went back to the doss and dossed, and in the morning he did not get up until shortly before the house was due to open. The hour from 2:30 to 3:30 he devoted to having himself shaved to the pluck. The whole of Sunday he spent in doss, as the hall porter at Wynn’s was aware, thinking of Miss Counihan. The power to stop his heart had deserted him.
“My poor friend,” said Wylie.
“Till this morning,” said Neary. Feeling his mouth beginning to twitch he covered it with his hand. In vain. The face is an organised whole. “Or rather this afternoon,” he said, directly he was able.
He had reached the turn and was thinking of ebbing back when the boots from Wynn’s came in and handed him a telegram, FOUND STOP LOOK SLIPPY STOP COOPER. He was still laughing and crying, to the great relief of the curates, who had grown to detest and dread that frozen face day after day at their counters, when the boots returned with a second telegram, LOST STOP STOP WHERE YOU ARE STOP COOPER.
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