‘No. I regret I haven’t.’
One never imagined to take Rashers seriously. Always expecting to find his joyful knock on my door in the morning. Or that he would be any more than just amusing one with his bizarre plan. But clearly now he is dislodged from Dublin. Where he enlivened every block of granite his heels clicked upon. Lit up the lobbies, made the Buttery and Jammet’s glow with life. Not to mention, I suppose, some darker pawn shops and catacombs. But nevertheless a comfort like a familiar field or horse one knew so well. And here I am stranded having somehow to busy about one’s life.
The days of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Attempting to dislodge from one’s own trough of despair. Searching every street, peeking in every shop for a sign of Leila. Just hoping to meet her. As one finally pauses conspicuous on a street corner. Watching the bicycles, the trams and hooting motor cars go by. Do as Rashers said. Keep my options open. Have one’s hair cut. Attend fittings at one’s tailor. Shoes at one’s shoemaker. Order cartridges at the gunsmith’s. Keep moving lively in the world. Yet one did so miss him. Waking waiting, soul submerged, for his jovial momentum to take him in the door. And his entrepreneurial endeavours lugging my family silver, all the blue cloth wrapped little bags, in another door under three balls to the pawn.
Now as I walk wandering lonely still on the utter verge of utter complete and absolute despair. One’s butler should make one glad to be alive instead of making one think one is dying in bankruptcy. Eaten out of house and home by staff. How can I return. To find at every little strong breeze, the great slates crashing from the roof. Rot in floors, walls and ceilings. What tools there are, disappearing. Machinery rusted and broken. Rashers said take the long term view. Dear boy, the land isn’t going to get up and run away. My god. No. Instead one will, with worry, drop dead on it and melt away to one’s bones. Leaving them white and criss crossed on a meadow’s emerald soft bosom. Having no way to find my love I loved. From whose loins my sons and daughters could have come. And do I now go searching for my mother’s jewels, so long rumoured hidden somewhere out on that land. Do I flog the paintings. The delft. Now as I go around the Green. In this Dublin. Up past the College of Surgeons. Its thick giant fortress walls. Throw this tinker lady a penny. Cross the street. Go into the park. Sit on a bench. Watch the seagulls. And the ducks glide in. A hawk high up chasing some large slowly flapping bird across the sky. The grounds keeper sweeping up the wet leaves clinging to the paths. A softness falling. Shall I westwards homewards depart. On the train. Await an end of winter at Andromeda Park while still a small ember of hope within me burns. That reassuring sign of spring is sure to come. The first swallow zooming over the orchard. Or hang on. And the operative word. Being I suppose. Hang.
Darcy Dancer emerging from the park. Walk by the fence, cross into the strange streets. Sound of engines puffing. Trains. Harcourt Street Station. Something cold, alone and wretched along these pavements. Go in this archway down this alley. Stout and whisky inside. One feels so many of these Dubliners leave their dead dreams on the smoke stained walls of a pub. Turn left, turn next right. A timber merchant’s. What on earth do all these people do in there behind all these twitching curtains. This blank day. When no fox is found. Ride on to another covert. I suppose in adversity I must continue to hold my head up high. Be worthy of my acreage. Even now one remembers. The day as a child I was sick and dying. All one’s servants led one by one into my room to hover their spooky heads above my bed. Sexton placing his plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin on the dresser. A Catholic candle burning. For my Protestant soul. I could, out in the country, be hunting today. Hear Foxy Slattery telling me when we were boys, as he gave me a leg up. Ah now this would be a horse so safe if it would throw you sky high in a jump it would run and catch you squarely as you somersaulted down from the clouds. And now tacked up, this little unprepossessing sign, stuck on this doorway as one passes here in some foot discomfort, is exactly what one presently requires. Carefully hand printed. Footcare Specialist. Late of London. At least one’s presence in Dublin can be occasioned by a visit to the chiropodist’s. And indeed by all indications of this foot note ha ha, a sophisticated big city one at that. At this lonely three o’clock in the afternoon.
Darcy Dancer proceeding up the stairs and to the end of a cold bereft hallway. Flowered wet wallpaper peeling. Knock and enter it says. A chair. A table. Shiny waxed linoleum squeaking underfoot. And ah. A most ancient and dog eared copy of Tatler and Sketch. A lady’s voice in the next room saying come in.
‘Is this the chiropodist’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry I don’t have an appointment.’
A white coated chilled lady creature getting up from writing what appears to be a letter. Steps to look in a book whose pages are clearly congealed closed by the damp. Rubbing her hands together. Obviously hasn’t had a previous customer for years.
‘Yes. I think we can just fit you in.’
‘Thank you so much.’
And sitting in her rickety chair, as she switched on a bar of an electric fire, it was rather nice having someone take off one’s shoes. Drag down one’s socks. Listening to her. Begin talking nearly a mile a minute. As if I were going to run away. Telling how she spent the war in England. Saved to take a course. Now returned to set up professionally in her native land. Where the rent was cheap. But from whence she planned to expand to Grafton or Nassau Street soon. In the tiny windowless room, she did take the longest time to trim a corn on my toe, and then ages to clip and file my nails. Pushing back the cuticle exposing the moons. As if one were entered in a beauty contest. Then she did rather deliriously massage my considerably chilly feet. With a nice, very nice circular motion applied to the instep. And then one’s ankles. Asked if one went skiing. And I lied. With two little words. Yes. Frequently. And even added. Down the Matterhorn. When wartime travel permitted of course. Then asking me rather leading questions. Where I was from. Was I English. Of course I had the incredible notion to say I was an Austrian. But thought being French might give a more pleasant impression. And yes of course one was educated in England. Harrow as a matter of fact. I was astonished how lies could so easily spill out of one. But as it was fast appearing I would soon have to be a con man it was as well to start practising. I used the word chateau just as she remarked on my elegant bone structure which she said was especially apparent about the inferior tibio fibular articulation. At least it was evident she knew her anatomy. Indeed she was beginning to sound like Rashers.
‘You have an extremely fine ankle. This is the external malleolus of the fibula. And this muscle I am rubbing is the flex or brevis digitorum.’
One really didn’t give a fig about what muscle any muscle was, for at the moment going through one’s mind was a vision of Lois, stark naked at the top of her narrow steep stairs, a line of men waiting out her front door and down her alley. And she wore a sign around her neck. Which said. One at a time only. Of course the vision completely vanished as the chiropodist’s hands, having nicely massaged my Achilles tendons, were now venturing upwards upon the back of my legs. And one was slowly but surely becoming utterly transfixed with this albeit most embarrassingly bizarre but rapidly increasing enjoyable frisson. As she had now both her hands deep up my trouser leg. All ten of her brightly crimson nail varnished fingers, five to the left, five to the right, engaged caressing my calf muscles.
‘Skiing has made your legs strong. And you do don’t you, do a lot of walking.’
‘Yes as a matter of fact I do.’