Nora -A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce - Nuala O'Connor

Muglins

Dublin

JUNE 16, 1904

WE WALK ALONG BY THE LIFFEY AS FAR AS RINGSEND. THE river smells like a pisspot spilling its muck to the sea. We stop by a wall, Jim in his sailor’s cap, looking like a Swede. Me in my wide-brim straw, trying to throw the provinces off me.

“Out there are the Muglins Rocks,” Jim says, pointing out to sea. “They have the shape of a woman lying on her back.”

His look to me is sly, to see if I’ve taken his meaning. I have and our two mouths crash together and it’s all swollen tongues and drippy spit and our fronts pressed hard and a tight-bunched feeling between my legs. His hands travel over my bodice and squeeze, making me gasp.

“Oh Jim,” is all I can manage to say and I step away from him.

“You have no natural shame, Nora,” he says, and he’s coming at me now with his thing out of his trousers and in his hand, that one-eyed maneen he’s no doubt very fond of. It looks, I think, like a plum dressed in a snug coat.

“No natural shame?” I say. “Don’t be annoying me. Do you think because I’m a woman that I should feel nothing, want nothing, know nothing?” But I dip my nose to his neck for a second, the better to breathe his stale porter, lemon soap smell. Span-new to me.

Jim squints and smiles. I kneel on the ground before him, my face before his tender maneen, glance up at him; Jim drops his head, the better to see my mouth close over it. The taste is of salt and heat, the feeling is thick and animal. I suck, but only for a spell, then I draw back and peck the length of it with my lips. I stand.

“There,” I say, “there’s a kiss as shameful as Judas’s and don’t tell me it isn’t exactly what you wanted, Jim Joyce.”

A groan. He wants that bit more, of course, but that might be enough for today, our first time to walk out together. We kiss again and he lingers in my mouth, wanting to enjoy the taste of himself on my tongue. His paws travel over me, front and back. Oh, but he’s relentless. So I unbutton him, put my hand into his drawers, and wrap cool fingers around his heat. A gasp. I work him slow, slow, fast until he’s pleasured, until my fist is warm and wet from him.

“You’ve made a man of me today, Nora,” Jim says, a coddled whisper, and I smile. It’s rare to have a fellow say such a thing and I feel a small bit of power rise up through me, a small bit of joy.

I wipe myself with my handkerchief and Jim fixes his clothes. I hold out my hand and Jim takes it and together we walk on.

Throwaway

Finn’s Hotel, Dublin

JUNE 20, 1904

A HORSE CALLED THROWAWAY WON THE GOLD CUP AT ASCOT. This I’m told by a man whose hotel room I’m cleaning. The man shouldn’t be in the room while I’m here. Or I shouldn’t be in the room while he’s here. One of the two. But I’m so shocked by his attire that my brain can’t decide which it is. The man is wearing only an undershirt and, though it’s long, he appears to have no drawers on and he’s talking to me as if he’s in a three-piece suit crowned with a hat. I stand like an óinseach with a rag in one hand and a jar of beeswax in the other, trying not to gawp.

“Throwaway!” the man says. “Can you believe it?”

The man doesn’t sound Irish. He may be English. Or perhaps even American. His arms are white beneath a fur of black hair. The strands look long enough to plait. He has a gloomy expression, a father-of-sorrows way about him. His bare legs are bandy and fat, like a baby’s. I feel my face scald hot, so I turn my back to the man and look for somewhere to put down my rag and polish.

“A twenty-to-fucking-one outsider,” he roars and I jump. “And all my money thrown away on that damned nag Sceptre.”

He starts to laugh and it’s a mirthless sound. Then he goes quiet and I hear a click; I turn my head to see the man start to hack at his wrists with a razor.

“Sir, sir!” I shout.

But he keeps slicing at his arm until he draws red and I run to him. There’s not enough blood to