‘Gert’s all right, you know. She’ll take good care of your Pa,’ Cissy Caffrey said. Milly could do no more than nod while Cissy extolled the virtues of the young woman whom Papli had chosen to run off with. ‘I expect he’ll marry her now. No option, has he? Now our Gerty’s found her man she’ll never let go. She’ll fatten him up, you’ll see.’ Cissy chuckled, then, as the courthouse door opened and a constable appeared, added, ‘Nice to meet you. Got to go,’ and, long legs flashing under her bedraggled skirt, darted off to waylay Archie Jarvis before he could reach the safety of the barracks.
Mr Coghlan came down the steps carrying Milly’s suitcase. Behind him a gaggle of policemen and jury members emerged and then, at last, her father, the young woman, Gerty MacDowell, clinging to his arm as if her life depended upon it, which, Milly thought wryly, perhaps it had.
The crowd outside the courthouse had thinned considerably. No longer a celebrated murderer, the public’s interest in Leopold Bloom had rapidly waned. Reporters rushed forward, though, calling for quotable comments on Boylan’s deathbed confession, asking what Mr Bloom would do now and would he really leave Dublin, while photographers tried to snap ‘the mysterious stranger’, whose evidence had blown the coroner’s case right out of the water.
In that uncertain moment, Milly longed to have the slate wiped clean, her mother still asleep in the bedroom in Eccles Street, Pussens in the kitchen, her father, braces hanging down his back like a monkey’s tail, standing by the sink shaving and humming to himself, happy, she supposed, or at least contented. But no one could put the clock back for, as Papli had once told her, time ran on like the Liffey flowing ever into the sea.
‘Milly,’ said a quiet voice behind her. She felt Michael’s arms about her and rested her head on his shoulder while Mr Coghlan, puffing a little, put the suitcase down by her side.
As if he had read her mind, Michael Paterson said, ‘You can’t go back to Eccles Street, Milly. Harry and I have booked rooms in the Imperial and one of them is for you if you want it. If your father has other plans for you, of course, we’ll understand.’
She had lost him in a sea of heads, lost her father, her first love. He had cast her off in favour of another woman.
In spite of Michael’s comforting arms, she experienced a pang of resentment as if Papli, not Blazes Boylan and her wayward mother, had ruined her life. And then he was with her, her Papli, unsmiling, dark sorrowful eyes looking down at her. Behind him she glimpsed the MacDowell woman, a pretty, dainty thing, enjoying the attention but needy too and watching, sharp-eyed, lest her man, her Poldy, slip away.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Milly said.
‘Tell you what?’ her father said.
‘Everything.’
‘Because,’ Papli said, ‘there are certain things it’s best to find out for yourself.’
‘Do you love her?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘More than you loved Mummy? More than you love me?’
‘How can I answer that?’
‘I think, sir, you’d better try,’ Michael Paterson told him.
‘If I don’t, you’ll think me a coward, I suppose.’ Papli sighed. ‘Well, I did what I thought was best for all of us. For you, Milly, yes, and for me too.’
‘And Mummy?’
‘Most of all for Molly.’
‘Are you leaving tonight for Liverpool with … with her?’
‘No, there are too many loose ends to tidy up. Gerty daren’t go home so we’ll put up at the City Arms for the time being. I’ll be there if you need me.’
‘I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone,’ Milly said.
‘Yes, Milly, you do,’ Michael said. ‘We all need someone to make us complete. Am I not right, Mr Bloom?’
‘How can I disagree with you when I don’t even know who you are?’ her father said.
‘He’s a doctor,’ Harry Coghlan put in. ‘Michael Paterson. He has a practice in Mullingar and I think I’m right in saying he’s Milly’s very good friend.’
‘Oh!’ her father said. ‘What happened to Bannon?’
‘He was not for me,’ said Milly.
‘Poldy? Poldy?’ Gerty MacDowell called out.
Her father glanced over his shoulder.
‘You’d better go to her,’ Milly told him.
‘Yes, I’d better. Do you want anything from the house?’
‘The house?’
‘Our house. Number 7, I mean.’
She felt tears start hot behind her lids. She pursed her lips and shook her head. He put his hands on her shoulders and held her. ‘Go back to Mullingar, Milly. You have friends there now.’
‘She does, Leopold, she does,’ said Harry Coghlan.
‘And you, Papli, will I see you again?’
‘Of course, you will, darling. Of course, you will.’
Milly did not believe him. He stooped and kissed her brow and then, very quickly, turned away and the last she saw of her father he was walking down Store Street with a stranger clinging to his arm and a pack of pressmen on his heels.
He sold his books at a pretty fair price and put the furniture, including the piano, to auction at Dillon’s Rooms with instructions that whatever was raised by the sale be sent to his daughter at an address in Mullingar. He did not sell the bed, though. He paid Kelleher to collect the mattress, bolster and bedclothes in one of his carts and burn them in a corner of the timber yard. The iron parts, squeaky springs and rattling rings included, he dismantled and left against the wall of the jakes for the next tenant of No 7 to deal with.
Molly’s clothes and Milly’s ‘baby’ things, he packed neatly into two big boxes and had them delivered to Lizzie Fleming to launder and keep or, more likely, sell for a handful of shillings. He held back only a few trinkets that he’d given to Molly over the years and the hand mirror and silver-backed hairbrush she’d had as a girl in Gibraltar and the beads – a rosary? – that had belonged to her long lost mother, Lunita Laredo, from whom she’d inherited nothing but her good looks and full figure.
These items and four photographs, already fading, he sealed in a straw-lined box and, with almost the last of his ready cash, posted it off to Milly in the hope that when her broken heart healed she might appreciate a few nostalgic tokens to remind her of her childhood and her mother, as well as the sixteenth birthday gift from the Mercury Insurance Company to help her on her way.
Himself, he shed no tears at tackling the chores and refused to make a ritual out of it. He was, after all, a practical man, untroubled by dreams now. His only concession to revenge, and it was mild enough, was to take the vase from the bedroom and the two pieces of painted china that had been returned by the police and toss them into the Liffey before he went to have supper with Gerty in the City Arms Hotel and tuck her, chastely, up in bed. There would be time enough for satisfying his earthly desires, for breasts and bottoms and pliant young thighs, when all was squared away and he had cash and Dublin was behind them which, in fact, happened much sooner than he expected.
It was still early morning when he walked through the gates of Glasnevin cemetery carrying a small bunch of violets, wetted not with water from a painted pot but with a final tear or two.
There was no one about except two gravediggers, shadowy shapes against the ground mist, and he soon left them behind. He turned towards the section that bordered the Finglas Road, along the path that led to his mother’s grave and Rudy’s and the spot where Molly lay. He had ordered a stone from a carver in Great Brunswick Street and would pay that bill, and his bill at the City Arms Hotel this afternoon, for Gerty and he were sailing on the night boat to Liverpool en route to London where a man of his talents would surely find employment.
He thought of dropping by the offices of the Freeman’s Journal but doubted if he would be made welcome and he’d be damned if he’d curry favour by buying them drink. He’d said his farewell to Cunningham, and Gerty and he had brought Mrs Dignam and Mrs MacDowell up to town for afternoon t
ea to say goodbye to them too.
Soon he would take a last long stroll through the streets of Dublin and leave behind all the guilt, deceptions, aspirations, disappointments and betrayals that had made him the man he was. The city would remain only in his memory and Milly and he, and Molly too, would be forgotten by all but a special few.
The wreathes had faded already and the leaves had turned brittle. He could see the wires poking through. He left them untouched on the mound of sods that had begun to settle and knit. He broke the little posy of violets into three and put a flower or two on each of the graves, the old and the new, then, kneeling, he kissed his fist and dabbed it twice on the grass beneath which Molly rested, which was the best he could do by way of farewell.
He rose then, a little stiff in the knees, looked out towards the leafing trees that sheltered the Tolka and smelled the scents of Dublin, dew-damp and fresh in the morning hour. Then, turning, he headed off to catch a tram to Grafton Street to call at the offices of the Provident Life Insurance Company and collect payment on a second policy that not even Neville Sullivan, for all his ingenuity, had uncovered: a policy made out to Leopold Bloom for three hundred pounds, the sum for which he had insured Molly’s life on that monumental day last June when he had known for sure he had lost her.
Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? Page 29
