An End and a Beginning (36 page)

“‘Your need,' she said, ‘your need', that first night, that first hour, when I was blind, when I was trying to find my way in, somewhere,
anywhere
, I remember the words. My bloody ‘
need
', she said. That time, the wonderful time, the time I was warm, the time I was trusting, the time I was hoping in, had waited for, had watched for, and I saw the years melt away one after another and I felt I was home. Home at last.

“‘Listen, Peter dear, please listen,' she said.

“My God but I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to be sorry for her, I wanted to hold her in my arms, I wanted us both loving, both blind, but I couldn't listen, and I heard her cry into the pillow, and I let her cry. The clock's ticks sounded like feet all over the room. ‘He'll come after you and you'll throw your arms about him. He
won't
come and you'll crawl back across the sea. I don't believe this
is
your home, was
ever
your home. I don't believe this tomb was anybody's home.'

“She moved, I heard her move, and I didn't want her, I wanted nothing, and I knew the words I couldn't find, they were buried deep down in her, anchored there, steel words, they wouldn't budge, and she had only to turn a key, the simplest key in the world, and let them come, and speak them to me. Whenever I was close, whenever I lay with her, I was always feeling for those words, wanting them, waiting for them, if only she'd spoken them. Just three. I love you. She doesn't, and I'm a fool. Closer now, her hand on my neck, her fingers at my hair, my head pressed to her breast, but anything can come out, but not the words I want. No. She loves this other man. That's all, that's just all. ‘Leave me alone,' I said.

“I thrust my head back, I couldn't bear it, hating seeing her, shut my eyes, it was such a downright bloody lie.

“‘No—
No.
'

“She sobbed on my shoulder. ‘I can't help myself.' I wasn't even listening. I was listening to something else. A hard voice in my own ear, the voice I didn't want, the one I dodged, the one I turned my back on, shut my ears against. ‘There's somebody talking to me already,' I said. ‘Who?'

“‘It doesn't matter,' and it didn't.

“‘Who?' she asked again, and that time I couldn't get clear, I was tight in her arms. ‘Who?'

“‘Just a bent man with stone legs,' I said. I sat up then.

“‘Where are you going?'

“
‘Out.
'

“I groped about for my clothes, and I got out, I left her, left the room, the house. I walked down that drive with Gelton behind me, Gelton talking, and I had to listen, had to listen across that field, and into this lane, and down that road, and he was still behind me, the stone-legged bastard I'd almost forgotten about, down another lane and he was still there, hanging on, won't let go, I knew he wouldn't. Telling me, telling me, shouting into my ear, making me listen. I
had
to, I just couldn't get clear of Gelton. Yes, a bent man with stone legs, and he'll never break. Feet in my ear, sea in my ear, words, words and words. ‘The train moves like a snail but it will at last reach the coast.'

“I saw the train, I heard it puffing asthmatically across a silent countryside. ‘The ship sails at ten o'clock prompt, and you'll be home in the morning.'

“Home.
Home
. ‘Sailors are ten for a penny now, but you'll get your chance.'

“I thought of that, I thought hard about it. ‘The house is still in the same street, off the same road, and so is the door, and you can knock on it forever and forever, and it will never open.'

“And that was Gelton telling me what my name was. ‘The roads are the same as ever they were, but more clouded with men, and they walk about them saying that the ships are rusting up, glued to the quays, can't move, and won't move.'

“I saw the river and the ships, the roads and the men. I stopped by a dry wall and I leaned against it, listening to this damned city shouting in my ears, and I stared down at the dark of a lane, and the mud of a lane. I felt cold, miserable, and I had to listen. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sound of hounds on a farm, and the owl hooting just over my head. ‘You know about the hatch and the winch, the derrick, the block, and the guy rope. You'll know the ship when you see it.'

“I knew I would, I knew it all along. ‘You've been hiding between a woman's legs.' Gelton was breathing down my neck. I just walked on, didn't know where, didn't care much, and somehow I knew that I'd never get rid of the man with the stone legs, never.

“‘You ought to have known from the beginning.'

“Anywhere on this walk I can hear Gelton shuffling behind me. I reach out and I stumble, I lean to the tree and the wall, I stand still by a bank. And everywhere I move I wake the things that are sleeping. The frightened, fluttering birds, the snarling, chain-locked dog in the kennel, and once an explosion of horses away from a farm gate. I stopped then. I turned round and looked back at the tomb of a house that was still lost in the darkness. A house as big as a town, the one that missed the petrol. An echo in every room I walked in, a smell of money. ‘God Almighty's little fright is still living in Bonim Road, and he's so deaf he can't even hear what other people are saying. He's still alone, and he's still waiting for somebody that will come, anybody that will come. His son from the sea, his wife out of nowhere.' And I thought of Joseph Kilkey. I couldn't help thinking about him. I talked to myself, and I talked into the empty air.

“‘All right. Yes, I'll go back to-morrow, I'm coming back, I want to, I
am
back,' I said, and I knew that he was as deaf as a post. Hears nothing, and waits for everything, the son, the wife, a happier day. I knew where my place was.

“‘You should have known from the beginning,' Gelton said again, like a parrot. Gelton never stops talking, never stops ramming the words down my ear. Yes, perhaps I should. Perhaps the whole thing is just a lovely dream. I thought of the house again, and of the fisherman's daughter with the keys around her waist, smiling her smile, cunning as a monkey, pious as a monk, her room and her prayers, and her saints as close to her as her own skin. Smiling and saying nothing, watching us make bloody fools of ourselves, watching us stumble in and out of the ghost-ridden rooms. I walked on, and on, and
on
, and I couldn't get rid of the voice in my ears. ‘Go back. Go back.'

“‘I'll go back,' I began telling myself, ‘I'll go back, yes, I'll clear out to-morrow,' and all the time I could see nothing ahead of me but the house, and the room, the woman and the bed. The things she remembered to forget, the things she forgot to remember. I thought of
him
. I couldn't help thinking of him,
his
hands,
his
mouth,
his
eyes. Just being sorry for me, opening her legs and swallowing me up. Christ! When I think about it. I was talking to her again, and I was simply hating her. ‘Crawl back then, bend down, right down. Grovel.'

“We could have been happy, I know we could. I stopped by a tree and I leaned against it, and I asked myself what the hell I was doing here, and I didn't even know, and then I turned round and began the long walk back to the house. I could hear the clopping sounds of a horse on a near-by road, and I imagined the man striding it as he went off to his work on the farm. I saw the first light begin to break through the trees. ‘To-morrow,' I thought, ‘to-morrow.'

“My feet plodded, dragged, it was only my thoughts that pushed me forward. Looking back from time to time I could see the darkness still pocketing the hills, the blue of them yet hidden, and sometimes I'd just stand and stare, and think of them silent, peaceful, like the horse on the road, the man. The mist was rising all about me, and for the first time I became aware of the silence spread over this morning land.

“If only she'd said it, just once, meant it. If—— Over the fields and into the wood, across the bridge and down into the paddocks, behind the stables and into the garden, on to the drive and down between the avenue of trees that stood up like men. Then I saw the single light from the high room, and I knew that the saint was up and setting about her business.

“Poor Miss Fetch. I wonder if she ever dreamed of marrying the Colonel. Perhaps she's even happy in her own queer way, loving her keys and her silence, the ghost-filled rooms and her own that is warm with prayers, with saints, with books and beads that will chariot her skywards on the big day. I wonder if she
will
go, I wonder if she wants to. I wonder what she thinks. That knowing bloody smile she has, the way she looked me up and down the evening I came, the way she watched me. Perhaps she
was
afraid of me.

“I sat down on a wooden bench and stared up at her candlelit room. I thought of yesterday, the crazy day, the day bursting with action and resolutions, the day of destruction. That endless tramping up and down the stairs, that shifting, and pulling, that fondling and that hurling out, and always I was watching her, wondering about her, being angry with her, being sorry for her, there was something a little mad about her. And that housekeeper close behind her, always there, and the times I wished her to hell out of my sight. I couldn't even speak, couldn't get a word in edgeways. Throwing the orders over her shoulder, one after another, the captain of the big ship setting everywhere to rights, building upwards again, and always forgetting that the anchor was there, right down, deep down; it would never come up. The orgy of smashing, the things she hated, the things that pleased her. Animated and smiling, serious and furious, sad and quite lost. How she enjoyed the smashing, how she must have loathed the things that flew from her hand. And the smoke sent flying up one chimney after another, making the ship move, making the house warm. An end and a beginning, she said. Perhaps it was, perhaps it is. I just sat on the bench and watched the light come, watched it grow.

“The way she talked to me yesterday, like a sister, like a mother. And so concerned, it touched me deeply, but it wasn't the answer, she knew it wasn't, she doesn't understand, doesn't want to, the words are still there, deep inside, locked away, she can't speak them. That's all I wanted. The things she said.

“‘You could teach,' she said.

“‘Teach?' I was staggered, and I still am.

“‘Why not? You've had the training, and there's always room for teachers.' I said no, and that was what I meant, I hadn't any ambitions that way. I was scared of that word. Somebody else had been ambitious for me, and look where I was. I laughed it away.

“‘What do you intend to do?' she asked.

“How genuine she was, how determined to be my sister, my mother. I didn't even know. ‘I'll do something,' I said, and I had a feeling even then as to what it might be, some kind of a ship was beginning to stir inside me.

“‘I'm too new, I'm too bloody raw. I can't say
what
I'll do. But I won't starve. I expect I'll just do what the others did.' It required no effort to say it, and somehow I even felt a warmth coming to me, and that's what I wanted, warmth, and that reaching out to get a hold on something, and to hang on to it, that's what I watched for. That's all I ever wanted, Sheila, just Sheila. It's always her, and nobody else, I've never altered. If only she'd say it to me, just the once. Christ! I could move, I could tear up all the roots, we could get clear away from it, away from Gelton, and away from this damned grave of a house. I think about it, I can't stop thinking about it, it lifts me up, I'll crawl and beg for the words out of her mouth, if
only
she knew. If
only
she wasn't so bloody calm when she talks to me, as if I didn't know what she's left behind her, and what she walked into, and what she wallowed in. Happy with him. I don't believe it. She was always so good at hiding things. I can only see the flowers when she kneels down and hides the mud. God! The things I remember. The things that come clear to me as I sit on this bench. The way I thought about her, dreamed about her, up in that damned hole all those years. Talking to myself, talking to her.

“‘What is it like down there, Sheila?' I'd say. ‘To-day, in Gelton, this very day, this very minute. Are you still in Price Street.' Is
he
there, too? Funny, but I could never get to calling him by his name, it was always he, or him. And I always thought of him as thrusting, stamping in, stamping down, climbing up, always climbing up, kicking things out of his way, kicking people, the usual ones, the good old mugs. He's got where he wanted to get. The times I looked at that slit-holed door and saw her peeping through, or looking down at me from that window that was always worth reaching for. Smiling, always smiling in. Sometimes she was so real I could have touched her. I'd ask myself, what was she doing yesterday, last night, what is she doing
now
, this very minute, on this day, on any day, on a bright morning, on a dark one, a Saturday afternoon, a Sunday evening? I could see her sitting, hear her talking, see her lying and always with those closed but beautiful eyes. I had a little map of her days in my mind, I used to stick little flags in it, wanting to remember something I'd imagined her doing, saying, thinking, hating to forget it.

“I glanced up at the window again. The light was still there, and I could see the housekeeper's shadow moving to and fro across the blind. It is so still that I can hear a murmuring sound out of her open window. Miss Fetch might be talking to herself, which she often does when she isn't saying her prayers. I've never
really
talked to her, got inside. A way in is tricky, I think it might be difficult to talk to a saint. I think of her age, of her curious, shut-down, hemmed-in life between walls, a lifetime of serving others. I think of her in that huge kitchen, bent over a stove, this woman in her stiff black and her pure white. I can even see her hands as she stirs the invisible something in a pan, and it makes me think of her as bent and stirring from the day she is born. Over her head I can see the vast array of burnished copper pans, of kettles and jugs and the rest, relics of more spacious days, of what they call the good old days, the great days. I look at the eternal glow of the fire. Lucky house, I think, having a fire to light. So many of them are on their uppers, only a single assembly of flames to remember, I hear a clang of the old times and the new. I see this shadow on a window, and I think of her so-private life, the walls as cell and shield. I think of her girlish bout with the Colonel. I think of her often lonely, I think of her postman friend. Poor Miss Fetch. Committed Miss Fetch. I think of my simple questions, my silly ones. Had she liked working at Rath Na? The smile and the answer. At fifteen and a half she had been sent up by her fisherman father, and nobody had ever asked her what she liked. And did she like the Downeys? ‘I never discuss my employers with anyone,' she said, and I can hear her saying it, experience a gentle snub for a second time. ‘I just got used to serving people,' she said.