“Hallo, Corley!”
Corley turned his head to see who had called him,
and then continued walking as before. Lenehan
ran after him, settling the waterproof on his shoulders
with one hand.
“Hallo, Corley!” he cried again.
He came level with his friend and looked keenly in
his face. He could see nothing there.
“Well?” he said. “Did it come
off?”
They had reached the corner of Ely Place. Still
without answering, Corley swerved to the left and
went up the side street. His features were composed
in stern calm. Lenehan kept up with his friend,
breathing uneasily. He was baffled and a note
of menace pierced through his voice.
“Can’t you tell us?” he said.
“Did you try her?”
Corley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly
before him. Then with a grave gesture he extended
a hand towards the light and, smiling, opened it slowly
to the gaze of his disciple. A small gold coin
shone in the palm.
Mrs. Mooney was a butcher’s daughter.
She was a woman who was quite able to keep things
to herself: a determined woman. She had
married her father’s foreman and opened a butcher’s
shop near Spring Gardens. But as soon as his
father-in-law was dead Mr. Mooney began to go to the
devil. He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong
into debt. It was no use making him take the pledge:
he was sure to break out again a few days after.
By fighting his wife in the presence of customers
and by buying bad meat he ruined his business.
One night he went for his wife with the cleaver and
she had to sleep a neighbour’s house.
After that they lived apart. She went to the
priest and got a separation from him with care of
the children. She would give him neither money
nor food nor house-room; and so he was obliged to
enlist himself as a sheriff’s man. He was
a shabby stooped little drunkard with a white face
and a white moustache white eyebrows, pencilled above
his little eyes, which were veined and raw; and all
day long he sat in the bailiff’s room, waiting
to be put on a job. Mrs. Mooney, who had taken
what remained of her money out of the butcher business
and set up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street, was
a big imposing woman. Her house had a floating
population made up of tourists from Liverpool and the
Isle of Man and, occasionally, artistes from the music
halls. Its resident population was made up of
clerks from the city. She governed the house
cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when
to be stern and when to let things pass. All
the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam.
