Liars and Saints

When Gabriel Conroy finally arrives, in "The Dead," a little shit hits the fan: “Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?” asked Lily.  She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat. Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler.  Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll.  “Yes, Lily,” he answered, “and I think we're in for a night of it.”  He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat carefully at the end of a shelf. “Tell me, Lily,” he said in a friendly tone, “do you still go to school?”  “O no, sir,” she answered. “I'm done schooling this year and more.”...

Because St. Patrick's Day would be incomplete without some James Joyce! Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come. A few thoughts on this famous opening paragraph. One thing that leaps out: Lily is actually not a main character in this story. But James Joyce seems to want to be God-like, and to dip in and out of several pe...