‘Ah, she’s only a bit quiet.’
‘She has a docile expression all right.’
‘She wouldn’t damage a fly.’
Soon after that Heffernan took to calling in at FitzPatrick’s digs in Donnybrook more often than he had in the past. Sometimes he was there when FitzPatrick arrived back in the evening, sitting in the kitchen while the elderly maid pricked sausages or cut up bread for the meal that would shortly be served. Mrs Maginn, the landlady, liked to lie down for a while at that time of day, so Heffernan and the maid had the kitchen to themselves. But finding him present on several occasions when she came downstairs, Mrs Maginn in passing mentioned the fact to her lodger. FitzPatrick, who didn’t himself understand what Heffernan’s interest in the general maid was, replied that his friend liked to await his return in the kitchen because it was warm. Being an easy-going woman, Mrs Maginn was appeased.
‘There’s no doubt in my mind at all,’ Heffernan stated in Kehoe’s after a few weeks of this behaviour. ‘If old Flacks could hear it he’d have a tortoise’s pup.’
FitzPatrick wagged his head, knowing that an explanation was in the air. Heffernan said: ‘She’s an interesting old lassie.’
He then told FitzPatrick a story which FitzPatrick had never heard before. It concerned a man called Corley who had persuaded a maid in a house in Baggot Street to do a small service for him. It concerned, as well, Corley’s friend, Lenehan, who was something of a wit. At first FitzPatrick was confused by the story, imagining it to be about a couple of fellow-students whom he couldn’t place.
‘The pen of Jimmy Joyce,’ Heffernan explained. ‘That yarn is Flacks’s favourite of the lot.’
‘Well, I’d say there wasn’t much to it. Sure, a skivvy never would.’
‘She was gone on Corley.’
‘But would she steal for him?’
‘You’re no romantic, Fitz.’
FitzPatrick laughed, agreeable to accepting this opinion. Then, to his astonishment, Heffernan said: ‘It’s the same skivvy Mrs Maginn has above in your digs.’
FitzPatrick shook his head. He told Heffernan to go on with himself, but Heffernan insisted.
‘She told me the full story herself one night I was waiting for you –maybe the first night I ever addressed a word to her. “Come into the kitchen outa the cold, Mr Heffernan,” she says. D’you remember the occasion it was? Late after tea, and you didn’t turn up at all. She fried me an egg.’
‘But, holy Christ, man –’
‘It was the same night you did well with the nurse from Dundrum.’
FitzPatrick guffawed. A great girl, he said. He repeated a few details, but Heffernan didn’t seem interested.
‘I was told the whole works in the kitchen, like Jimmy Joyce had it out of her when she was still in her teens. A little gold sovereign was what she fecked for your man.’
‘But the poor old creature is as honest as the day’s long.’
‘Oh, she took it all right and she still thinks Corley was top of the bill.’
‘But Corley never existed –’
‘Of course he did. Wasn’t he for ever entertaining that fine little tart with the witticisms of Master Lenehan?’
The next thing that happened, according to FitzPatrick, was that a bizarre meeting took place. Heffernan approached Professor Flacks with the information that the model for the ill-used girl in Joyce’s story ‘Two Gallants’ had come to light in a house in Donnybrook. The Professor displayed considerable excitement, and on a night when Mrs Maginn was safely at the pictures he was met by Heffernan at the bus stop and led to the kitchen.
He was a frail man in a tweed suit, not at all as FitzPatrick had imagined him. Mrs Maginn’s servant, a woman of about the same age, was slightly deaf and moved slowly owing to rheumatism. Heffernan had bought half a pound of fig-roll biscuits which he arranged on a plate. The old woman poured tea.
Professor Flacks plied her with questions. He asked them gently, with courtesy and diplomacy, without any hint of the tetchiness described so often by Heffernan. It was a polite occasion in the kitchen, Heffernan handing round the fig-rolls, the maid appearing to delight in recalling a romance in her past.
‘And later you told Mr Joyce about this?’ prompted Professor Flacks.
‘He used come to the house when I worked in North Frederick Street, sir. A dentist by the name of O’Riordan.’
‘Mr Joyce came to get his teeth done?’
‘He did, sir.’
‘And you’d talk to him in the waiting-room, is that it?’
‘I’d be lonesome, sir. I’d open the hall door when the bell rang and then there’d be a wait for maybe an hour before it’d ring again, sir. I recollect Mr Joyce well, sir.’
‘He was interested in your – ah – association with the fellow you mentioned, was he?’
‘It was only just after happening, sir. I was turned out of the place in Baggot Street on account of the bit of trouble. I was upset at the time I knew Mr Joyce, sir.’
‘That’s most understandable.’
