Dublin
SEPTEMBER 15, 1904
“I‘M A WANDERER, NORA,” JIM SAID TO ME WHEN I MET HIM FIRST just three months past and it has proven to be true. He flies from lodging to lodging, now with this friend in Shelburne Road, now with that one in Sandymount. He doesn’t want to live with his pappie and the family for they draw on him like leeches, he says. The way it is, Jim finds it hard to settle in one spot and people, generally, annoy him; he finds their oddities hard to deal with.
“I’ve enough foibles of my own without having to figure out other people’s,” he told me once.
“People are strange, it’s true for you,” I answered but I thought about it for days, the business of him not getting along with others. I can muddle through with most people and, I think, life’s easier on those who can.
At the moment Jim is staying with his friend Gogarty in the old tower by the sea. It’s a bit of a trot from there to town, so I see less of Jim and that pains me. I prefer to be with him every day for I feel complete when we’re about each other. Therefore, it’s a lovely surprise to find him outside Finn’s when I step out for a minute of air on my dinner break.
On seeing me, he tosses away the cigarette he’s smoking. “Nora, I summoned you with my mind and you came.” He steps forward and grabs my hands and his look is feverish.
“Jim, what in heaven is the matter?” His lovely blue eyes are bloodshot and the lids swollen. “Have you been weeping, my love? Has something happened?”
He pulls me along by the wall, away from the hotel door, to talk; his sharp glances to left and right unnerve me. “Nora, I want to get out of Dublin. Life is waiting for me, if I choose to enter it.”
I dip my head—made quiet by his confession. He talks so fondly of his time in France and I knew, I suppose, from things he’d say, he wanted to go back there, but I hoped I’d be enough to keep him fixed to Ireland.
Jim lifts my chin with one finger and asks a question I hoped for but did not expect. “Nora, will you come with me?”
“Away with you? As man and wife?”
He shakes his head sharply. “No, Nora. I won’t be bound by any church. Does that make you want me less?”
I take my hand from his. “No.” I hesitate. I know Jim has no time for priests or churches, but what would become of me if we go off together, unmarried? I’d be stained, spoiled, unable to return to my life here. “But will we ever marry, Jim?”
He shivers and looks to the ground. “I’m not sure I’m a man for wedlock.”
I nod and stand where I can see the entrance to the hotel, in case the manager sticks his head out and sees me. It would be a great adventure to go with Jim, away from all we know, but I’d like to marry even if he would not. I might, it occurs to me, cajole him into it by and by. It wouldn’t be proper for a man and woman to be together in life without marrying, after all. I’ll surely convince him to wed if we go abroad together, if only in a quiet little way. Jim’s head still hung, his teeth begin to chatter, and the look around his eyes is that of a hunted man.
“Jim, something has you rattled and raw. Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“I walked from Scotsman’s Bay, through the night, Nora, to see you and ask you if you’ll leave this place with me. Please say that you will.”
My heart pummels my ribs—I mean the world to Jim as he does to me. He walked through the dark hours just to see me. “You were up all night? You have the look of it, right enough.” I’ve never seen him so shaky, even after one of his big nights of drinking with his friends.
Jim drops his head into his hands and groans. “Will you answer what I’m asking you, girl?”
I wrap my fingers around his and pull his hands down. “I’ll leave Dublin with you, of course. I’d go anywhere with you, Jim.” My heart bullies my rib cage, but I mean it—I want to be with him more than I want anything else.
“Do you understand me, Nora? Do you know what this means?” His eyes are frantic.
“Yes,” I say, “yes.”
A tiny sob escapes his throat. “Oh, Nora, thank you.” Jim kisses my hand then lights another cigarette with shaking fingers. “Gogarty shot at me last night, in the tower.”
“He shot at you?” My astonishment is total. “With a gun?”
“He had Trench, that awful Hiberno fiend, staying. Trench said he dreamt a panther was about to kill him and the damn fool pulled out a revolver and shot a bullet across the room. Not to be outdramatized, Gogarty snatched up the gun and shot at my side of the room, knocking a clatter of pans on top of me where I lay. I knew then I could not stay another night with Gogarty. He’s a class of troll, like so many of the men I know, and crazy besides.”
I bless myself. “Dangerous is what Gogarty is. It’s lucky you’re not stone dead, Jim. If I see that craythur I’ll give him a tongue-lash like he’s never heard.”
Jim chuckles and grabs me around the waist. “You look uncommonly beautiful, snapping like a dragon in your white cap and apron, Nora Barnacle. Perhaps when we leave you will pack that little uniform in your trunk?”
I push him off. “Behave yourself, James Joyce.”
Jim jigs his legs—he’s shook after his ordeal, it’s clear; he brings his face close to mine. “Nora, I went to Byrne—the only sensible man of my acquaintance—and asked him if we should go abroad and he said I should not hesitate to ask you and that if you said yes to me, I was to take you as soon as I ever could.”
I dip my head; I don’t know Byrne at all, but it pleases me that he spoke for me. The hotel door opens and a band of guests wafts out onto Lincoln Place. I will shortly be missed.
“I have to go back in, Jim. If I’m caught idling out here with you, they’ll string me. And dock my wages. We’ll need every penny.”
He puts his hands on my arms, turns me to face the hotel door, and pushes me playfully. “Go,” he says. “You’ve promised to come away with me now and that can’t be undone.”
“It can’t and it won’t,” I say, blowing him a kiss.
“I knew there was one who understood me,” he calls after me as I run to Finn’s door; I turn and wave to him before dipping inside.
While I dust mantelpieces, tuck sheets, and clean toilet bowls, my breath freezes for moments at a time imagining two bullets pinging across the tower and the horrible fright Jim got. The peril Gogarty put him in. My insides tumble and throb with relief to know that my Jim is safe and that soon we’ll be together properly, just we two, and no one on God’s earth will be able to interfere with us. Smiles break across my face as I work and I can’t stop them; they come in unbidden waves and I welcome and savor them, along with the giddy ratter-tatter of my heart. We are going away! We are going away!