Ulysses, Chapter One

These mornings when the sun was like an egg-yolk in a sky of blue made you glad to be alive, Joe thought.

All the more so when you couldn’t help but think of those who no longer were. Joe reached in the wardrobe for his black double-breasted suit, the one which only came out for funerals. Even so, our hero reflected as he turned to the tall bedroom window, there was much truth in the old saying. Beneath the beginnings of yet another hot day, the closely-placed tiled roofs of Boston were laid out in their familiar intricate pattern. The railway was a single bold dash cutting across this complexity, a reminder to Joe of far-off places he might eventually wish to see.

There was every reason to be glad to be alive.

After a short hunt for his cufflinks Joe found them in one of his waistcoat pockets, and so finished off, then set out for the service with his hat on.

Not much changed in Boston. Our hero, as he watched by the graveside with the other mourners, supposed that was why occasions such as these were always so conspicuous.

They were after all burying someone who’d been inseparable from Joe’s childhood here. An inspiration even, in some ways. There weren’t many long-haired local men, and our hero could believe it was he to whom they were saying goodbye who’d first given him the idea. Maybe Joe would try his full beard too one day. He’d not been exactly a father-figure, having worn his limitations and vulnerabilities rather too close to the surface for that. But perhaps it was more that he’d shown the young Joe that a man might be prone to such failings, in ways a father could not afford to.

Boston was just going to have to get used to life without him.

All the same, such melancholy themes couldn’t keep Joe’s mind from straying as the last rites meandered on. He was still thinking about poached eggs. No better reason to cook something special tonight. Although recently, Joe seemed to have been cooking something special most nights. Did he have more time on his hands than he used to?

Over there on the other side of the plot was family. Joe remembered that son with golden hair, who by now looked quite grown-up. Speaking of which.

That well-turned-out lady couldn’t possibly be Morag from school?

Even though our hero had been too young back then to think in any real terms of romance, he’d been enormously fond of Morag. She was standing nearer to him than Penelope and the children were, so while continuing to pay all due attention to the solemnities, Joe sidled over and in a whisper made tentative enquiries.

Not that he needed to, because her dark blue eyes and elfin face he knew for Morag’s at a glance. What was more, the still-girlish smile she returned told our hero she recognised him too.

“I think it’s usually hats off at funerals, Joe,” Morag whispered back.

They spent the whole of the wake together, laughing over their schooldays. Morag wanted to stop by and visit Joe the next time she was free, so that he could cook for the pair of them.

“Ooh, your cakes and things,” she enthused. “I’ll never forget those baking lessons.”

Nor would Joe. In fact, just now he was well and truly immersed in reliving the curious incipient intimacy of bringing that cheeky little girl an iced bun made just for her.

“So if you’re still in the area, how come I haven’t heard of you throwing dinner parties every weekend?” demanded Morag. “I would, if I could cook like you.”

Funny that Joe should have just been thinking about the time on his hands, and how lately it had felt there was something missing at home, as if his knocking around all alone in that big old house wasn’t the way it had always been. Thoughtful for a moment, he looked down at the glass of orange juice in his hand.

Which, somehow, seemed to help.

“The last party I hosted,” Joe began slowly, still staring as though the answers were within the lees of his honey-coloured drink, “was, I believe, a mere buffet affair in the garden one evening. There were few guests, only two if I recall. Yes. Two girls…”

“Same old Joe,” Morag remarked.

Our hero laughed again. Then Morag asked him if he was ever planning to finish that juice, and Joe with a smile at his own absent-mindedness did so.

“Then stay,” she told him earnestly. “Don’t even think of leaving Boston yet. Not until you’ve given me the change to properly revisit Home Economics. Here, I’ll get you another.”

So saying Morag kicked her legs out from under the white tablecloth, and swept for the end of the room where the caterers were.

Same old Morag.

In more ways than one, Joe considered. She seemed to be spinning his thoughts in both directions today, very much to the past but no less so the future. Our hero might have said he was glad he’d come, though of course he checked himself at once. Hardly the time or the place, and they were silly sentimental notions anyway. If he wasn’t careful, next he’d be talking in terms of having met his future wife.

Although, that said. People did.

There were even novels about it.

The act of walking home, Joe later decided on that same literary note, was the core text. The primary source. You only had to start your day on something out of the ordinary to appreciate as much, when every tree and backyard and telegraph pole you passed was somehow irreducibly the right and proper one. It was other places that departed from such standards, and ended up making the same simple arrangements different or even downright wrong.

What other places?

Since when was Joe an expert on those distant demesnes he’d pondered earlier, which lay beyond Boston and might be reachable by the railway line?

It had been that sort of thing today, our hero reflected, not untroubled by it. He had every reason to be in a good mood, and on top of that a sunny afternoon free of further obligations and appointments stretched before him. Yet still his mind revolved restlessly on such matters as the other places just now, and the garden party he’d dimly recollected to Morag, and she herself when she was getting up.

Past time he was out of this funeral suit, resolved Joe, and sought his bedroom. The weather was living up to its promise, and he felt like going out. A safe place made better sense for his cufflinks, after the rummage he’d had, so Joe unlocked his desk drawer and tossed them inside.

They landed on a sealed envelope.

Why was everything stirring up vague uneasiness this morning? For whatever reason, that letter did so more than anything else thus far. Joe knew at once he didn’t want to open it.

He also knew he’d had enough of these mysteries. A carefree wander round town was what he needed. Closing and locking the drawer again, he finished changing and exited his room.

END OF CHAPTER ONE