Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom?

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘It’s not her fault. She took a tumble on Dalkey Hill and broke her foot. The bones were badly set by some ham-fisted quack,’ Bloom said. ‘Her damned father wouldn’t pay for surgery and the result is that awful limp.’

  ‘What, Leopold, did you promise her. A new foot?’

  ‘No, only to take care of her.’

  ‘How were you going to do that when you already had a wife,’ Father O’Grady said, ‘a wife and a daughter?’

  ‘My daughter’s settled in Mullingar and my wife …’ Bloom sighed and spread his fingers. ‘My wife had her own life.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘Her career as a singer, I mean. They no longer had need of me.’

  ‘You wanted someone to care for you, is that it?’

  ‘No,’ Bloom said, ‘I wanted someone to care for.’

  ‘I see.’ The priest said and, reaching into his pocket produced a plain brown envelope. ‘Well, this is for you, from Gerty?’

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘No. I’ve been compromised enough as it is,’ said Father O’Grady. ‘Aren’t you going to open it? What if it requires a reply?’

  Bloom nodded and, with the envelope held low between his knees, carefully opened it and unfolded the sheet of notepaper it contained. Printed in tiny, meticulously formed letters in violet ink the message read, ‘What ever happens, dearest, I will always love you. P.S. The suitcases are safe.’

  ‘Tell her,’ said Bloom, ‘I understand.’

  ‘Is that it? Is that all?’

  ‘Gerty will know what I mean.’ Mr Bloom rose from the cot and held out his hand. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for your sake.’

  ‘I know.’

  The handshake was less prolonged this time and there was no indication that the priest might wish to hug him.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Bloom.’

  ‘Goodnight, Father,’ Bloom said and, to save Rosie O’Grady the trouble, hammered on the cell door to summon the jailer.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘Here’s a mystery for you,’ Jack Delaney said. ‘If Bloom converted to the Protestant faith to marry Molly, why is she being buried in Glasnevin? Is there a Jewish section somewhere, or what?’

  ‘Bloom has a family plot,’ said Martin Cunningham, one of Leopold’s loyal friends. ‘It’s over by the Finglas Road so we’ve quite a hike before us.’

  ‘Not so much of a hike as the pall-bearers,’ said Neville Sullivan. ‘This plot, who’s buried there?’

  ‘Bloom’s mother and his infant son,’ said Mr Cunningham.

  ‘What about his father?’

  ‘Ah, no,’ Mr Cunningham said. ‘His father took his own life. He lies in Ennis. Bloom attends a vigil there every year.’

  ‘What was he, the father?’ Jack Delaney enquired.

  ‘Came over from Hungary years ago,’ Mr Cunningham informed him. ‘Family name was Virag. He changed it by deed.’

  ‘Very wise of him,’ Delaney said. ‘Jew, I take it?’

  ‘He was, poor chap,’ said Mr Cunningham.

  ‘Do you pity him for being Jewish,’ Neville Sullivan said, ‘or for taking his own life? I assume the two are not connected?’

  ‘Not in my mind,’ Mr Cunningham said curtly.

  Dawdling a half pace ahead of the others, Kinsella glanced over his shoulder. ‘In Bloom’s mind, do you think?’

  Martin Cunningham said, ‘To be sure old Rudolph is never far from Bloom’s thoughts. The sadness was stirred up in him again when he lost his own little boy ten or eleven years back.’

  ‘Is he on watch, Inspector?’ Neville Sullivan asked.

  ‘Watch?’

  ‘My client, on suicide watch in Kilmainham?’

  ‘Oh, I doubt if Bloom intends to do away with himself,’ Jim Kinsella answered. ‘I think he’d consider it cowardly.’

  ‘And illegal,’ Delaney put in. ‘By Crikey, a man can get ten years hard labour for doing himself in.’

  Mr Cunningham politely smiled. He was employed as an official in the Works Department of the Castle and, as such, had a nodding acquaintance with Kinsella but he clearly didn’t approve of Delaney.

  It was a day of low cloud, cool but not cold. All four men wore dark overcoats, suits and black neckties. They had met by chance, not arrangement, by boarding the electric tram car in the vicinity of the Pillar all bound in the same direction.

  ‘I promised Bloom I’d attend,’ Neville Sullivan said apologetically. ‘He wants me to make note of who’s here.’

  ‘It’ll be in the paper, won’t it?’ Mr Cunningham said.

  ‘No,’ Delaney said. ‘It’s sub judice.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Mr Sullivan. ‘It’s no more sub judice than fly in the air. It’s not as if you’re publishing the names of the jurors.’

  ‘Exactly what I told my editor,’ said Jack Delaney. ‘But he’s cagey, very cagey since we ran foul of the courts last year. By the way, apropos my previous question, who’s calling the tune today?’

  ‘Boylan, I believe,’ Kinsella said.

  ‘Why isn’t Leo here?’ said Mr Cunningham. ‘In the name of common decency wouldn’t parole have been in order?’

  The lawyer said, ‘Bloom chose not to request parole.’

  ‘Couldn’t face the funeral, I expect,’ said Jack Delaney. ‘One way or the other he just doesn’t have the neck, is my guess.’

  Martin Cunningham opened his mouth to defend his old friend but closed it again promptly when the coffin appeared from the direction of the Finglas Street gate which, with its noble granite piers and a view of the O’Connell tower, was as beautiful an entrance as the departed could hope to pass through.

  The men removed their hats and stepped back to allow the grave-diggers’ cart to pass. The cart was preceded not by a priest but by a vicar in flapping black robes. He led the mournful procession at a brisk pace past the mortuary chapel into the avenue that curved like a bow between monuments and gravestones back towards Finglas. There was nothing much to Finglas save the proximity of the cemetery and a couple of uninspiring spires. Off to Kinsella’s right, across the Tolka, the handsome old mansions of Glasnevin village peeped from the ridge, just visible through a forest of marble and a network of branches.

  Kinsella had only been to a couple of funerals here, Catholic colleagues who had died not bravely in the line of duty but of wasting illnesses that had carried them away too soon. His mother, two aunts, three uncles, a niece and cousin were all interred at Mount Jerome across the Liffey at Harold’s Cross. For some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on, he felt less comfortable here than there, where his ancestors awaited his arrival.

  Behind the coffin, walking fast, came a straggle of mourners, headed by Milly Bloom, all in black, clinging to Boylan’s arm. It was rare for women to attend funerals. The Inspector wondered how much argument Boylan, or his sisters, had put up to dissuade the girl from flouting tradition. None at all, maybe, given that, Bloom excepted, Milly was Marion Tweedy Bloom’s only living relative, at least the only living relative anyone knew about.

  She walked, the girl, with head unbowed, hat bobbing. She did not glance at the men as the cortege passed but kept her eyes on the coffin; no shoddy affair knocked up out of knotty pine but good sturdy wood polished to a silky sheen. Brass handles, too, Kinsella noted, that tapped a rhythm on the side panels as the cart lurched after the striding clergyman; no lullaby but a march for Molly and the child curled like a caterpillar in her lifeless womb.

  There were fewer mourners than Kinsella had anticipated. His wife had predicted that Dublin’s choristers would turn out in force but for once Edith was wrong.

  He recognised D’Arcy’s horsy features and wax moustache, another man he could not put a name to, a barrel-chested baritone if memory served him, and, walking alone, a lanky downcast man in a scruffy knee-length mackintosh, who may or may not have been a singer too. He looked in vain for the boozy crew from the Journal or some of Milly Bloom’s slavering suitors but they had all s
teered clear, he reckoned, because of the taint of murder, a taint that would follow Poldy Bloom, whatever a jury decided, all the days of his life.

  The grave had been opened on a little slope of ground with only a few monuments in the row. One small white stone, stained by lichen, held hands with a granite slab that settling earth had tilted inwards as if it were listening for the sound of the infant, Rudy, whimpering in his sleep below. Now here was Molly, a woman given over more to nature than to God, with a hired Church of Ireland minister to commit her body to the ground and her soul and the soul of the unfledged wee thing within her, Bloom or Boylan made, into the presence of an all-seeing God who, Kinsella was sure, wouldn’t judge her too harshly.

  ‘I take it,’ Delaney said in a whisper, ‘you’re on duty? What are you looking for here, Inspector? The phantom intruder?’

  ‘What are you looking for, Mr Delaney?’

  ‘What I’m always looking for: a good story.’

  The grave-diggers unloaded the coffin from the back of the cart. Several wreathes had been tucked into the cart and they were taken out and laid on the grass too. The minister, still anxious to get on with it, instructed Milly and Boylan where to stand. The minstrel mourners formed a hesitant half circle, two rows deep, and allowed the clergyman to bully them into position.

  Kinsella, Delaney and Sullivan kept to the rear, intruders themselves after a fashion. Mr Cunningham, round-shouldered, stood in front of them and answered Kinsella’s quiet questions without turning his head.

  ‘The old fellow in the coat with the astrakhan collar?’

  ‘Dillon,’ Mr Cunningham muttered. ‘Old friend of Molly’s father, the Major. Has a house in Terenure where Bloom and Molly first met.’

  ‘And the young man, the boy?’

  ‘One of the widow Dignam’s lads.’

  ‘Why is he here?’

  ‘Bloom took care of Mrs Dignam after her husband died. Not many of Paddy’s so-called friends gave a toss.’ Mr Cunningham spoke into his chest but Kinsella could hear him clearly enough. ‘Mrs Dignam thinks highly of Mr Bloom. The boy’s attending in her stead, I fancy, since he’s head of the household now.’

  Kinsella shifted his shoes on the grass, moving an inch closer to Martin Cunningham’s shoulder. ‘Bloom and Mrs Dignam …’

  ‘No, nothing of that nature,’ said Mr Cunningham. ‘Bloom’s a conscientious sort of chap. He made sure Dignam’s insurance was paid out promptly and he visited the family as often as he could.’

  ‘Where does Mrs Dignam live?’

  ‘Tritonville Road, I think, or thereabouts.’

  ‘Really?’ Kinsella said, then, submissive as schoolboy, shrank into silence under the stony gaze of the vicar who was about to begin the committal.

  From the moment Blazes had helped Milly into one of Kelleher’s musty cabs and closed the door he’d become aware that soon after the funeral he must address the question of what the devil he was going to do with her if Bloom was sent up for trial at the April Assizes.

  In the tailored black outfit Milly looked less like a foal and more like a filly or, add a year or two, a healthy brood mare while he, in striped trousers, frock coat and silk hat felt more like a decrepit stockbroker than a young dandy. Even so, if Molly hadn’t been riding in the hearse ahead of them he might have squeezed an armful of supple young flesh just to allay the dread that had undermined him ever since Bloom had stumbled unexpectedly on Molly’s battered corpse.

  The corpse had been dressed and coffined in the mortuary room, which, Blazes had learned, was not uncommon after post mortems, something Corny Kelleher knew how to deal with, even if he did not. He’d paid sweet for Kelleher’s services and the fee for the minister who Maude had persuaded to do the honours. Damned, though, if he was hiring cabs for Bloom’s cronies who, given a half chance, would drink his bank account dry in Dunphy’s afterwards. In any case, as Daphne had been at pains to point out, certain elements in society regarded a murder victim as being almost as abhorrent as a suicide and would stay away on principle. Being a man of absolutely no principle Blazes hadn’t known what his sister was blathering about until the hearse drew up at the gates of the cemetery and he saw how scant the crowd was.

  Wrapped up in such thoughts, Blazes kept his eyes down and head bowed as the service progressed through its dreary ritual. God knows, he’d heard enough sermons as a boy when Maude and Daphne had dragged him to St Michael’s or St Catherine’s or all the way out to All Saints’ in Phibsborough to listen to some obnoxious preacher shout the odds about hellfire and the gruesome fate that awaited fornicators, masturbators and the Papist heretics who were intent on bringing the Union down.

  It wasn’t until the coffin, expensive brass handles and all, was lowered into the pit that Milly reeled a little. He, in the same moment, experienced a compelling urge to turn on his heel and, leaving Milly in the lurch and Molly in the grave, head at the double for Dunphy’s to drown his sorrows with four or five whiskeys before the hounds of hell caught up with him.

  ‘Blazes,’ the girl whispered, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘Fine, fine, perfectly fine, sweetheart.’

  Looking up, Milly gave him her arm to lean on while the first rattling hiss of in-fill, like someone pissing pebbles, came up to meet him from the grave.

  ‘Mr Boylan, you really don’t look well,’ Dr Paterson said. ‘Are you feverish? Here, let me …’

  ‘Keep your blasted hands to yourself,’ Blazes snarled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me that a pint of porter won’t cure.’

  ‘He’s upset, that’s all,’ Milly Bloom said soothingly. ‘He didn’t have much to eat at breakfast.’

  And too much to drink last night, Michael Paterson thought. He didn’t care much for Hugh Boylan but as a registered medical practitioner he was obligated to tend the sick whether they were citizens of Mullingar, Dublin or roaming the surface of the moon. To judge by his pallor, trembling hands and the manner in which he slurred his words, slight but detectable, Milly’s guardian angel was either about to have a stroke or throw an uncontrollable fit of rage, possibly both. Two fingers on the pulse in Boylan’s neck would shed light on the state of his blood pressure but he had no wish to rile the fellow and risk becoming involved in an unseemly squabble.

  He glanced over at the vicar who was glowering down his snoot at the delay or perhaps hanging on to see if he could collect another fee for burying Boylan too, double up.

  Milly said, ‘Can you walk, Blazes? If not I’ll send for …’

  ‘Of course I can bloody walk,’ Boylan said. ‘No, sorry, not your fault, not your fault. If you could just give me a hand, sweetheart. Once I’m on my feet … breath of fresh air … wooo!’

  He rose unsteadily from the tumulus, groped for the shaft of the digger’s wheelbarrow with one hand, Milly’s hand with the other and hoisted himself to his feet. He plucked at his necktie and collar. He was vaguely aware of mourners gathered in bewildered little groups along the path. He knew the beggars were waiting for drink, but Maude had assured him that this was no ordinary funeral and that such niceties would not be expected.

  Milly and the Mullingar doctor had moved away from the graveside and, facing each other, only inches apart, were engaged in earnest conversation. He took a pace towards them but his knees buckled and, stepping back, he seated himself on the end of the wheelbarrow and waited for his head to clear.

  Milly said, ‘It’s very kind of you to come, Dr Paterson. I didn’t expect to see anyone from home today.’

  Michael Paterson said, ‘Home?’

  ‘I mean Mullingar. Mr Coghlan’s house.’

  Dr Paterson smiled. ‘Harry had too many bookings or he’d have been here too. He told me to be sure to pass on his condolences.’

  Milly paused. ‘Dr Paterson, may I ask you a question?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘The baby in my mother’s belly, did he … did it …’

  ‘Suffer?’ Michael Paterson said. ‘No, Milly. It was too
undeveloped to be aware of anything. It would be gone as suddenly as a candle snuffing out,’

  ‘I see,’ said Milly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Milly,’ the doctor said, ‘how are you?’

  ‘Better than I thought I’d be. How long will I have to wear mourning?’

  ‘It’s usually a year for widows but in your case I think a month or perhaps two will be enough. Mrs C will keep you right on that score.’ He hesitated. ‘Unless your father is released, as well he might be, and you decide to stay in Dublin.’

  ‘No,’ Milly said firmly. ‘Whatever happens, I will not be staying in Dublin. Will you be in court on Monday?’

  ‘Harry and I will be there if you need us,’ Dr Paterson said. ‘Your friend, Mr Boylan, seems to have recovered.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Nervous exhaustion by the look of it,’ Dr Paterson said. ‘Not uncommon in men of his age.’

  ‘I’ll take him home and let his sisters look after him.’

  ‘Will you be able to handle him on your own?’

  ‘Oh, I can handle Mr Boylan,’ said Milly with a little grimace.

  She put out her hand, palm up and cradled Dr Paterson’s hand, palm down, just as Blazes called out crossly, ‘Milly, help required.’

  NINETEEN

  Although they’d taken his watch, along with his other possessions, Bloom was conscious that the hour of final parting was at hand. He had lain awake since just after dawn watching the band of grey daylight on the cell wall grow ever larger until, before the clink of breakfast trays sounded on the galleries, he’d risen, washed in a basin of cold water and dressed with extra care.

  Shaving water would be delivered – lukewarm and scummy – and a razor blade which would be removed after he’d used it but, unlike meals, the timing of that order of prison business was erratic and he feared he might have to keep his vigil with a day’s growth of beard and his moustache untrimmed. He would have a brief period of respite from the sight of four walls when he, with the other prisoners on the gallery, was shuffled downstairs to the long trough to empty his slop bucket and rinse it under a gushing tap, but that sordid exercise in sanitation apart he was faced with another long day alone with nothing to do but grieve for Molly.