BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast. I can never forgive you for that. (His clenched fist at his brow) Think what it means. All you meant to me then. (Hoarsely) Woman, it’s breaking me!
(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely’s sandwich–boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)
ALF BERGAN: (Points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: Up.
MRS BREEN: (To Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (She gives him the glad eye) Why didn’t you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM: (Shocked) Molly’s best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM: (Offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE: Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.)
PAT: (Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall…
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE: (With a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright’s! Lights!
BLOOM: (Ooints to the navvy) A spy. Don’t attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN: (All agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM: Let’s walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN: Let’s.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD: Jewman’s melt!
BLOOM: (In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd’s plaid Saint Andrew’s cross scarftie, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN: (In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil) Leopardstown.
BLOOM: I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I’ll lay you what you like she did it on purpose…
MRS BREEN: She did, of course, the cat! Don’t tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM: Because it didn’t suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity
