bloom
(In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with stiffening mud.) Harriers, father. Only that once.
rudolph
Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
bloom
(Weakly.) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
rudolph
(With contempt.) Goim nachez Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
bloom
Mamma!
ellen bloom
(In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle, widow Twankey’s blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her hair plaited in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand and cries out in shrill alarm.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all?
a voice
(Sharply.) Poldy!
bloom
Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.
