Lenehan

Lenehan, one of the two gallants in the story that bears their name, is a sharp-tongued hanger-on whose practiced sociability cannot conceal his material insecurity. He spends the day following Corley and waiting for the result of Corley’s pursuit of a servant; in the intervals, the story makes him more than a comic accomplice, revealing the hunger, fatigue, and longing that his streetwise performance keeps at bay.

Identity and Background

Lenehan is a squat, ruddy man who wears a yachting cap pushed far back, white rubber shoes, breeches, and a light waterproof slung over one shoulder. His clothes project youth, but the impression does not hold: at the waist his figure has grown rotund, his hair is scant and grey, and, when his animated expressions subside, his face looks ravaged. The contrast between youthful attire and visible wear establishes a man trying to keep pace with an image of himself that his body and circumstances undermine.

His manner is equally divided. While listening to Corley’s long monologue, he repeatedly breaks into wheezing laughter, his face rippling with amusement and his eyes turning cunningly toward his companion. Yet after the story ends, he laughs noiselessly for half a minute, then grows serious and silent. The performance is habitual, but it costs him: his tongue is tired because he has spent the afternoon talking in a public-house in Dorset Street.

Others regard Lenehan as a leech, but his adroitness and eloquence have kept his friends from forming a general policy against him. He knows how to edge into a group in a bar and remain at its borders until he is included in a round. A sporting vagrant, he carries a store of stories, limericks, and riddles, tolerates discourtesy, and is vaguely associated with racing tissues. The narrative gives no account of how he manages the stern task of living; that uncertainty makes his ability to talk his way into company feel like an improvised livelihood rather than mere charm.

The Waiting Game

As Corley recounts how he met the servant and describes the money and treats she has supplied, Lenehan listens and asks where Corley picked her up. He then presses him about the purpose of the present encounter, asking whether he will be able to pull it off and whether the woman is willing. Corley answers with a knowing gesture rather than an explanation. Lenehan’s questions make him an interested observer of the scheme, though the story does not show him directing it.

He follows Corley and the young woman from a distance, keeping them in view as they go toward the Donnybrook tram. Once alone, he looks older; his gaiety leaves him, and the harpist’s melody begins to shape his movements. He pads along by the railings of the Duke’s Lawn, his fingers tracing idle variations on them after each group of notes. The music briefly supplies a rhythm for his solitude, but it does not relieve it.

Lenehan walks morosely through Stephen’s Green and Grafton Street. The crowd’s invitations to boldness no longer attract him: he expects that social company will require him to speak, invent, and amuse, and he feels too dry in brain and throat to do so. He does not know how to pass the hours until he meets Corley again, and can think of nothing but continuing to walk. The lively talker is thus shown in the condition his public persona usually conceals: unable or unwilling to turn his gift for conversation into comfort when he is by himself.

Hunger and the Hope of a Home

At a poor-looking refreshment shop, Lenehan pauses over the food in the window: a cut ham on a blue dish and a piece of plum pudding. After glancing up and down the street, he goes inside and orders a plate of peas and a bottle of ginger beer. His rough manner is a deliberate effort to belie his air of gentility; the mechanic and two work-girls examine him before returning to their subdued conversation. He eats the peas greedily, appreciates them enough to make a mental note of the shop, and sits over the ginger beer thinking about Corley’s adventure.

In his imagination he sees the couple walking along a dark road, hears Corley’s energetic gallantries, and recalls the young woman’s leer. That imagined scene sharpens his awareness of his own poverty of purse and spirit. Corley’s apparent access to money and sexual opportunity becomes a measure of what Lenehan lacks, rather than a source of uncomplicated pleasure. He is tired of drifting, scraping by, and living through shifts and intrigues; he will be thirty-one in November and wonders whether he will ever obtain a good job or a home of his own.

The future he imagines is modest and domestic: a warm fire, a good dinner, and a settled place to live. Experience has embittered him toward both friends and women, whose worth he believes he knows, but it has not extinguished his hope. Once he has eaten, he feels less weary and less defeated; he can still picture himself settling happily in a snug corner if he meets a simple-minded girl with some money. His vision couples affection with financial security, exposing both his loneliness and the economic calculation that precarious life has taught him.

Corley’s Return and Lenehan’s Reaction

After leaving the shop, Lenehan resumes wandering through Capel Street and toward City Hall, then turns into Dame Street, where he stops to talk with two friends. Their conversation concerns acquaintances and a possible billiards win; Lenehan contributes an account of having been with Mac the night before. Even after this pause among companions, his attention returns to Corley. He wonders whether the plan has succeeded and whether Corley has asked the woman yet, sharing in imagination the pangs and thrills of his friend’s situation as well as his own.

The wait becomes physical anxiety. Lenehan searches the street, worries that Corley may have taken another route and left him behind, and lights his last cigarette while watching each tram stop. When Corley and the young woman finally appear, Lenehan reads their quick pace and silence as signs of failure. He follows them down Baggot Street, across the road from them, and watches the woman go down into the area of a house. A woman then runs down the front steps and coughs; Corley approaches her, his broad figure briefly blocking Lenehan’s view, and she reappears running back up the steps before the door closes.

Corley walks swiftly away toward Stephen’s Green, and Lenehan hurries after him. Anxiety and the run leave him panting. At the corner of Ely Place he asks whether it came off, but Corley keeps walking, his features composed in stern calm. Lenehan presses him again, baffled, with a note of menace in his voice. The story ends before Corley tells him what happened. That withheld answer preserves the immediate uncertainty, while Lenehan’s watchfulness, hunger, and fantasies have already exposed the cost of the life he shares with his companion: he can monitor another man’s prospects closely, yet remains unable to secure the job, home, or intimacy he desires himself.