Ulysses Part 66

--If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to allow me perhaps...

--Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I'll get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here or from here.

In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor.

From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.

--I'm deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won't trespa.s.s on your valuable time...

--You're welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you like. Next week, say. Can you see?

--Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you.

--Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered.

He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away among the pillars. With J. J. O'Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary's abbey where draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal, O'Connor, Wexford.

He stood to read the card in his hand.

--The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint Michael's, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He's writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he told me. He's well up in history, faith.

The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.

--I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O'Molloy said.

Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air.

--G.o.d! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? _I'm b.l.o.o.d.y sorry I did it,_ says he, _but I declare to G.o.d I thought the archbishop was inside._ He mightn't like it, though. What? G.o.d, I'll tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines.

The horses he pa.s.sed started nervously under their slack harness. He slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:

--Woa, sonny!

He turned to J. J. O'Molloy and asked:

--Well, Jack. What is it? What's the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard.

With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an instant, sneezed loudly.

--Chow! he said. Blast you!

--The dust from those sacks, J. J. O'Molloy said politely.

--No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a... cold night before... blast your soul... night before last... and there was a h.e.l.l of a lot of draught...

He held his handkerchief ready for the coming...

--I was... Glasnevin this morning... poor little... what do you call him... Chow!... Mother of Moses!

Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his claret waistcoat.

--See? he said. Say it's turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On.

He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them: six.

Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pa.s.s from the consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty division of king's bench to the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude.

--See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: Turns Over.

The impact. Leverage, see?

He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.

--Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can see what turn is on and what turns are over.

--See? Tom Rochford said.

He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop: four. Turn Now On.

--I'll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One good turn deserves another.

--Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I'm Boylan with impatience.

--Goodnight, M'Coy said abruptly. When you two begin

Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.

--But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked.

--Tooraloo, Lenehan said. See you later.

He followed M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.

--He's a hero, he said simply.

--I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean.

--Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole.

They pa.s.sed Dan Lowry's musichall where Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.

Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall Lenehan showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a b.l.o.o.d.y gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it, half choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky's vest and all, with the rope round him. And be d.a.m.ned but he got the rope round the poor devil and the two were hauled up.

--The act of a hero, he said.

At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past them for Jervis street.

--This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam's to see Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by your gold watch and chain?