Read Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? for Free Online Page A

shillings and sixpence a week with three shillings deducted for board; and very good board it was, for Mrs C was a better cook than Mummy.
    She continued to write to Papli but her heart was no longer in it. Papli said he might visit at Easter, if, that is, she couldn’t persuade Mr Coghlan to give her time off to come home.
    How could she tell her father, never mind her mother, that she didn’t particularly want to come home? She’d written to Papli to explain that Easter in Mullingar was a favourite time for weddings and that Mr Coghlan, with the best will in the world, wouldn’t be able to spare her even for a few days. She’d almost added that she was looking forward to seeing Mr Boylan again, if he did manage down for the Handicap Cup but, pondering, thought better of it and signed off with a kiss instead.
    Shortly before noon on that March morning, five weeks before Easter, she was out in the front shop with a felt mat spread on the counter and a chamois leather, fresh from the bottle, in her hand. Polishing soft optical glass required care and she was flattered that Mr Coghlan had entrusted her with the delicate task. She had dusted the lenses with a camel-hair brush and was just about to finish off with a loosely rolled corner of the chamois when the bell above the shop door tinkled and two men entered from the street.

    One was Constable Harris of the Royal Irish Constabulary, broad shoulders blotting out the light. The other was Reverend Stephens, uncollared, unhatted and unusually harassed. He came forward to the counter and, to her surprise, sought her hand.
    ‘Milly,’ he said in a sombre voice, ‘is Mrs Coghlan at home?’
    ‘I believe she’s upstairs,’ Milly answered.
    ‘And Harry … Mr Coghlan?’
    Milly gestured to the door of the studio behind her.
    ‘Best fetch him,’ Reverend Stephens said, ‘and the woman too.’
    Constable Harris nodded. Lifting the counter gate, he let himself into the rear of the shop, knocked on the door of the studio and, without awaiting an invitation, opened it and went inside.
    ‘What is it?’ Milly got out. ‘Is Mr Coghlan in trouble?’
    ‘Milly, oh Milly.’ Stretching over the counter, Reverend Stephens looped an arm about her. ‘It’s news, sad news from Dublin we’ve just received. I’m sorry to have to tell you your mother has passed away.’
    ‘Passed away?’
    ‘Dead,’ said the Reverend Stephens. ‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’
    The display photographs of brides, grooms and family groups danced and shimmered. Mirrored panels reflected splinters of light with piercing clarity, then everything began to swirl like an eddy in a stream and, still swirling, to blur and fade, then, for the first time in her life, little Milly Bloom fainted dead away.
    Kinsella crossed the canal bridge and approached the façade of Broadstone station that stood out severe and imposing against the skyline. He stopped at a stall in one of the porticos, purchased a cup of coffee and paused to take in the view over the King’s Inns and the dome of the Four Courts before fishing out his Memo Book and making note of his progress so far.
    Paperwork was the bane of all departments in the DMP and Kinsella was mindful that his every action had to be accounted for at the day’s end. He put the book away, swallowed the coffee, took three puffs on a cigarette then, duly fortified, set off round the back of the railway station in search of the lane that led down to Union Court.

    There were much worse slums in Dublin, some close to where he lived in the old town. In his days as a patrol man Jim Kinsella had visited most of them. The Union Court tenements had originally been thrown up to accommodate extra hands in the engineering shops and coal yards of the Midland & Great Western, good solid dwellings for honest artisans that, like the artisans themselves, had fallen foul of progress and hard times.
    Soot blackened the stonework and unrepaired eaves formed great green patches that