Martha

P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use.  I want to know.

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket.  Language of flowers.  They like it because no-one can hear.  Or a poison bouquet to strike him down.  Then walking slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word.  Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s perfume.  Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.

Weak joy opened his lips.  Changed since the first letter.  Wonder did she wrote it herself.  Doing the indignant:  a girl of good family like me, respectable character.  Could meet one Sunday after the rosary.  Thank you:  not having any.  Usual love scrimmage.  Then running round corners.  Bad as a row with Molly.  Cigar has a cooling effect.  Narcotic.  Go further next time.  Naughty boy:  punish:  afraid of words, of course.  Brutal, why not?  Try it anyhow.  A bit at a time.

Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.  Common pin, eh?  He threw it on the road.  Out of her clothes somewhere:  pinned together.  Queer the number of pins they always have.  No roses without thorns.

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head.  Those two sluts that night in the Coombe, linked together in the rain.

    O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers. 
    She didn’t know what to do
    to keep it up
    to keep it up.

It?  Them.  Such a bad headache.  Has her roses probably.  Or sitting all day typing.  Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves.  What perfume does your wife use.  Now could you make out a thing like that?

    To keep it up.

Martha, Mary.  I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked for money.  He is sitting in their house, talking.  Mysterious.  Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen.

    To keep it up.

Nice kind of evening feeling.  No more wandering about.  Just loll there:  quiet dusk:  let everything rip.  Forget.  Tell about places you have been, strange customs.  The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper:  fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown.  Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches.  She listens with big dark soft eyes.  Tell her:  more and more:  all.  Then a sigh:  silence.  Long long long rest.

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road.  The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air:  a white flutter, then all sank.