mention stomach. Her own began to burble as she turned an unsteady left out of the fine stained-glass doors of the Old Court Hotel and made her way down Shop Street, and a barely-suppressed belch announced her entrance on to the North Quay.
She was drawn by the sound of distant music then, and following it found the source was quite proximate to her unsteady presence, the illusion of distance provided by the yellow peeling facade of the quaintly named Star of the Sea Music Emporium. She walked up steps, through a doorway, down an arched hall and found herself in a wooden rotunda where a small orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and off-duty sailors were dancing with Drogheda ladies. She sat by an empty table and ordered another gin, and as she watched the swirl of giggling bodies around her a brown mood of melancholy settled over her. This mood was somewhat tempered by the taste of the gin she had ordered and by the presence, hot on its heels, of one Randal Noyce, Merchant Seaman. He complimented her on her presence in the same establishment, remarked on how it raised the tone of the place which was, between the two of them, hardly a step above your run-of-the-mill house of ill-repute, and congratulated himself, indeed, on his fortune in finding a like-minded soul in such a cesspit. He enquired of her profession and, on her reply, displayed an absorbing interest in all matters pertaining to the education of young ladies. He ordered a succession of further gins for Miss Isobel Shawcross of, as he was pleased to discover, the Kildare Shawcrosses, and noted with pleasure how the colloquialism of her speech increased in direct proportion to the number of gins she imbibed.
He asked her to dance and again was pleased to observe a definite shift in her centre of gravity as she accompanied him to the floor. This shift became if anything more pronounced as the band exercised themselves in yet another version of the “Blue Danube” and Merchant Seaman Noyce and Miss Shawcross exercised themselves in their version of a waltz. Mr. Noyce being small, and a dapper waltzer, it was all he could do to negotiate the increasingly gravitationless bulk of Miss Shawcross round the floor. There was, to be sure, the fleeting pleasure of her ample bosom, now felt on the crook of his left arm, now on the right and occasionally even brushing off the tip of his chin. And this pleasure, Mr. Noyce eventually felt, needed an environment more intimate than that of the Star of the Sea Music Emporium. So he invited her for, in his own phrase, “a walk along the river,” an invitation which she readily accepted, looking forward to hearing, in her own phrase, “the waters rowl.”
Once out on the North Quay, Miss Isobel Shawcross, of the Kildare Shawcrosses, revealed herself to have an education and a repertoire that ranged far beyond the confines of MagnalVs Questions and the King James Bible. She began a scandalous recitative version of “Captain Kelly’s Kitchen” which ran to seventeen verses, to the accompaniment of the slapping of river water and the creaking of steel hawsers. This lasted till Steampacket Quay where, in a disused shed behind Hope Mill, Miss Shawcross displayed a gymnastic agility most unsuited to ladies of the Kildare Shawcrosses, to any ladies whatsoever, indeed to all but Merchant Seaman Noyce, whom it suited fine. What suited him even finer was her rapid descent afterwards into the arms of Morpheus, a phrase of which the Kildare Shawcrosses surely would have approved as much as they would have disapproved the sight of her, legs akimbo, arms spread-eagled on a wooden palette. He left her there, snoring gently, among the broken barrels and damp wood shavings and an odour of old hops and excrement.
She awoke, forty minutes later. Befuddled by gin and sensuality, she instantly wanted more of both. She staggered out of the warehouse and made her way towards the sound of voices, which seemed to be coming from a licensed
She was drawn by the sound of distant music then, and following it found the source was quite proximate to her unsteady presence, the illusion of distance provided by the yellow peeling facade of the quaintly named Star of the Sea Music Emporium. She walked up steps, through a doorway, down an arched hall and found herself in a wooden rotunda where a small orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and off-duty sailors were dancing with Drogheda ladies. She sat by an empty table and ordered another gin, and as she watched the swirl of giggling bodies around her a brown mood of melancholy settled over her. This mood was somewhat tempered by the taste of the gin she had ordered and by the presence, hot on its heels, of one Randal Noyce, Merchant Seaman. He complimented her on her presence in the same establishment, remarked on how it raised the tone of the place which was, between the two of them, hardly a step above your run-of-the-mill house of ill-repute, and congratulated himself, indeed, on his fortune in finding a like-minded soul in such a cesspit. He enquired of her profession and, on her reply, displayed an absorbing interest in all matters pertaining to the education of young ladies. He ordered a succession of further gins for Miss Isobel Shawcross of, as he was pleased to discover, the Kildare Shawcrosses, and noted with pleasure how the colloquialism of her speech increased in direct proportion to the number of gins she imbibed.
He asked her to dance and again was pleased to observe a definite shift in her centre of gravity as she accompanied him to the floor. This shift became if anything more pronounced as the band exercised themselves in yet another version of the “Blue Danube” and Merchant Seaman Noyce and Miss Shawcross exercised themselves in their version of a waltz. Mr. Noyce being small, and a dapper waltzer, it was all he could do to negotiate the increasingly gravitationless bulk of Miss Shawcross round the floor. There was, to be sure, the fleeting pleasure of her ample bosom, now felt on the crook of his left arm, now on the right and occasionally even brushing off the tip of his chin. And this pleasure, Mr. Noyce eventually felt, needed an environment more intimate than that of the Star of the Sea Music Emporium. So he invited her for, in his own phrase, “a walk along the river,” an invitation which she readily accepted, looking forward to hearing, in her own phrase, “the waters rowl.”
Once out on the North Quay, Miss Isobel Shawcross, of the Kildare Shawcrosses, revealed herself to have an education and a repertoire that ranged far beyond the confines of MagnalVs Questions and the King James Bible. She began a scandalous recitative version of “Captain Kelly’s Kitchen” which ran to seventeen verses, to the accompaniment of the slapping of river water and the creaking of steel hawsers. This lasted till Steampacket Quay where, in a disused shed behind Hope Mill, Miss Shawcross displayed a gymnastic agility most unsuited to ladies of the Kildare Shawcrosses, to any ladies whatsoever, indeed to all but Merchant Seaman Noyce, whom it suited fine. What suited him even finer was her rapid descent afterwards into the arms of Morpheus, a phrase of which the Kildare Shawcrosses surely would have approved as much as they would have disapproved the sight of her, legs akimbo, arms spread-eagled on a wooden palette. He left her there, snoring gently, among the broken barrels and damp wood shavings and an odour of old hops and excrement.
She awoke, forty minutes later. Befuddled by gin and sensuality, she instantly wanted more of both. She staggered out of the warehouse and made her way towards the sound of voices, which seemed to be coming from a licensed
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