Free Murphy by Samuel Beckett Page B

since his first deserted wife was alive and well in Calcutta. But the lady in London did not take this view and neither did her legal advisers. Wylie knew something of this position. 
    ‘To control Cooper,’ said Wylie, ‘who has probably gone on the booze or been got at or both.’
    ‘But would it not be possible,’ said Neary, ‘with your priceless collaboration, to work it from this end altogether and drop Murphy?’
    ‘I greatly fear,’ said Wylie, ‘that so long as Murphy is even a remote possibility Miss Counihan will not parley. All I can do is establish you firmly in the position of first come-down.’
    Neary again buried his head in his hands.
    ‘Cathleen,’ said Wylie, ‘tell the Professor the worst.’
    ‘Eight sixes forty-eight,’ said Cathleen, ‘and twos sixteen one pound.’
    In the street Neary said:
    ‘Wylie, why are you so kind?’
    ‘I don’t seem able to control myself,’ said Wylie, ‘in the presence of certain predicaments.’
    ‘You shall find me I think not ungrateful,’ said Neary.
    They went a little way in silence. Then Neary said:
    ‘I cannot think what women see in Murphy.’
    But Wylie was absorbed in the problem of what it was, in the predicaments of men like Neary, that carried him so far out of his government.
    ‘Can you?’ said Neary.
    Wylie considered for a moment. Then he said:
    ‘It is his—’ stopping for want of the right word. There seemed to be, for once, a right word.
    ‘His what?’ said Neary.
    They went a little further in silence. Neary gave up listening for an answer and raised his face to the sky. The gentle rain was trying not to fall.
    ‘His surgical quality,’ said Wylie.
    It was not quite the right word.

5
    T HE room that Celia had found was in Brewery Road between Pentonville Prison and the Metropolitan Cattle Market. West Brompton knew them no more. The room was large and the few articles of furniture it contained were large. The bed, the gas cooker, the table and the solitary tallboy, all were very large indeed. Two massive upright unupholstered armchairs, similar to those killed under him by Balzac, made it just possible for them to take their meals seated. Murphy’s rocking-chair trembled by the hearth, facing the window. The vast floor area was covered all over by a linoleum of exquisite design, a dim geometry of blue, grey and brown that delighted Murphy because it called Braque to his mind, and Celia because it delighted Murphy. Murphy was one of the elect, who require everything to remind them of something else. The walls were distempered a vivid lemon, Murphy’s lucky colour. This was so far in excess of the squeeze prescribed by Suk that he could not feel quite easy in his mind about it. The ceiling was lost in the shadows, yes, really lost in the shadows.
    Here they entered upon what Celia called the new life. Murphy was inclined to think that the new life, if it came at all, came later, and then to one of them only. But Celia was so set on computing it from the hegira to the heights of Islington that he left it so. He did not want to gainsay her any more.
    An immediate flaw in the new life was the landlady, a small thin worrier called Miss Carridge, a woman of such astute rectitude that she not only refused to cook the bill for Mr. Quigley, but threatened to inform that poor gentleman of how she had been tempted.
    ‘A lady,’ said Murphy bitterly, ‘not a landlady. Thin lips and a Doric pelvis. We are P.G.s.’ 
    ‘All the more reason to find work,’ said Celia.
    Everything that happened became with Celia yet another reason for Murphy’s finding work. She exhibited a morbid ingenuity in this matter. From such antagonistic occasions as a new arrival at Pentonville and a fence sold out in the Market she drew the same text. The antinomies of unmarried love can seldom have appeared to better advantage. They persuaded Murphy that his engagement at even a small salary could not fail to annihilate, for a time at least, the