An End and a Beginning (39 page)

“D'you remember the war you hated and preached against, the one you came to like in the end when the government came along and dressed you up like one of Wellington's bright cocks and called you a captain. And how you organized for them, and helped them in every way and staggered your friends. It's long ago, you've probably forgotten that, too. The friends you rang the bells for, the ones you were always shouting about. It didn't take you long to heave yourself upon their backs. I think that was the time I really began hating you. God! The things I think about as I lie here. The day that war ended, and there wasn't a sea left that would have yielded up your poor old father.
I
remember that. You were off to London with your chest out, and your head in the air, whilst I sat a whole evening with your mother who was almost out of her mind with the news. The father you loved so much. The house was in utter darkness when I got there, and there was the same chair, and the same woman in it. I sat with her for three hours. Yes, there are things that I remember, and that I won't forgive.

“I must get up,” she thought, “I
must
get up. Winifred will begin to wonder.” She got out of bed. She drew the curtains. She sat at the dressing-table, and looked in at herself. She seemed to see his reflection in the looking-glass. “Poor Desmond. I expect he's quite lost without me really. I'm sure he is. He's like a big child in some ways.”

The glass suddenly clouded up with powder, her fingers ran riot at the table, she picked things up and flung them down again, she cried as she powdered, shut her eyes against the man in the mirror. “If only you'd been wrong for once. If only you'd been weak for once,” she said.

“D'you remember the evening I told you that I'd gone to see your mother, after I'd promised not to, and after I was determined to lie my way in to her loneliness. D'you remember striking me, and d'you remember my falling and being lifted up by you, and how sorry you were, and how you suddenly embraced me and whispered in my ear, and the whore was ready again, do you? ‘Let's forget it, darling,' you said, and I did, of course. I always did. I was quite dumb. I hadn't an answer. It was too late anyhow. It always was the moment I was in your arms. Something came over me, and your mother vanished in clouds of my own uncontrollable lust.”

She struck the table with her fist. “The times I cried out against you, against my own nature. Wasn't it always like that, wasn't it? Wasn't I still hoping and waiting, didn't I know that I might have to do more than
give
for the child. I must bend down for it, crawl for it, beg for it, whine for it. What a fool I was. Why didn't I leave you then, at that very moment when I realized what you were, the sort of person you were, with your simple mind that is only that of a peasant, and your curiously cunning and twisted nature that wrung lust out of me like water from the cloth.”

And she hammered on the table first with one fist, and then the other. “Oh, Desmond! Desmond.”

Powder came up in a shower, a box rattled to the carpet. After a while she sat up and wiped her eyes. She could no longer see herself in the looking-glass. She got up, hurriedly tidied her hair, picked up a dressing-gown and went off to the bathroom. She began to wash. When she looked in the mirror, only herself looked out. “The lies he told me. The lies I told myself,” she thought.

She returned to the bedroom and hurriedly dressed. She went downstairs and straight to the little study. It was empty. The fire burned brightly. She looked at the vacant chair, saw only a half-eaten breakfast. She rang for Miss Fetch.

“I'm glad you're down,” Winifred said, “shall I bring it in now?”

“Just some tea, Winifred, thank you,” Sheila said.

“He didn't eat much. I wonder where he went to?”

Miss Fetch came in with the tray, began pouring out the tea. “There's something I wish to say, ma'm,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Mr. Fury has gone,” Miss Fetch said.

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Just gone, ma'm.”

“Isn't he in his room, Winifred?”

“No. That's what I'm trying to say,” Winifred said. “He's left. Gone away.”

“Gone,” she thought, “he
has
gone.”

“I went up to do out his room and I saw the drawer he'd been using was open, and the few things he had with him were gone out of it.” She crossed to the mantelpiece, and picked up a letter.

“This letter was on the table. It's been there for some days, he hasn't even opened it, I expect he just forgot it in his hurry.”

“In his hurry,” thought Sheila, “in his hurry.”

She showed no trace of emotion as she said, “Then you
had
better give the room a thorough clean out, Winifred.”

“Very well. Will there be anything else now?”

“Nothing.”

The door closed.

“Poor Peter. I expect he'll get over it, I expect he'll meet some nice girl and get married. I hope he does. I wonder if he'll ever grow up.”

She could only remember with tenderness, with affection, with love. “I think I did love him,” she thought, “I think I did really love him.”

She seemed to hear the rhythmic pounding of train wheels, the blow of the ship. “I wonder what he'll do? I wonder where he'll go?”

She looked down at the letter in her hand. She looked at the date, the postmark. “From Gelton,” she thought. “I wonder—— It doesn't really matter who it's from. I must ask Winifred to take it down to the Post Office.”

Slowly she sipped her tea. “I wonder what I could do with my life?” And she got up and went out into the garden. She turned into the drive.

Miss Fetch watched her from a top window. “Poor Miss Downey. I was really sorry for her this morning, really sorry.”

Sheila walked on down the drive and stopped at the white gate. She leaned against it, she looked outwards. It seemed a short way out into the world, and it seemed a long way.

“I wonder if Milly stayed. I wonder what Desmond's doing now. When I came in through this gate I thought I was coming home again. It was a lovely feeling. But I wasn't really, and I knew I wasn't. He's right. It's too late, and it was too late long ago.”

She covered her face with her hands; she shut out the world that was near, and the one that was far away.

“She'll crawl back,” he thought, “I knew she would.”

He seemed to have been walking for hours, and he hadn't seen a soul on the road. Twice he had doubled back on his tracks; he had forgotten the road to the station. He stood for a moment in a lane, then hurried on, noting its gouged banks after heavy rain. The air was damp, the surrounding country silent. He looked across the bare fields, felt a silence, and thought of a sullen and rejecting morning.

“If only she'd said yes,” he thought.

He stopped and glanced back at the house. It still looked like a tomb, and low clouds seemed to touch the chimney-pots. Suddenly he heard the distant noise of the train, and started to run. And then the toy station, the toy train. He was one of two passengers. He boarded it, shut the door, and settled down in the corner.

The sight of a railway official irritated him. He thought he looked stupid, and even imagined that his ears were filled with hay. The moment the wheels turned he felt the shock of relief, and at the same time there came to him the sharp pain of realization, and he could feel the very emptiness returning to him. The train hooted importantly as it increased its speed and tore across the quiet country. It might take a hundred years to get there, but it would arrive at the port. He could see the ship, and he could hear the ship. “But not Gelton,” he thought, “not that.”

He stared at two framed pictures hanging over the opposite seat, and sunny scenes in Bantry Bay gave him a strange feeling in an empty carriage, on a grey morning. Nothing in this journey, and nothing in this land roused a feeling in him, or memories of an aged aunt in Cork, and the odd shape at the end of a path by the bare tree. He seemed to see himself standing at the extreme end of a long road, quite still, like a black question mark.

“There are so many bloody fragments that you couldn't even begin to gather them up, you couldn't even begin to think about it,” and he seemed to see them fall, one after another, the members of the family to which he had once belonged. He even heard each separate thud. “I wouldn't even know where to begin if I thought it was worth beginning.

“Poor Sheila! What a mess she's made of it, what a damned mess. If only she'd listened, if only she'd
tried
to, if only she'd trusted, if—Christ! I would have knelt for it till my damned bones cut the floor. I always loved her, and I didn't even have to tell her. She knew it. We could have done something, we could have tried.”

The train stopped at a halt. He looked out. More fields, more sour wintry grass, more dangling gateposts, and cows that seemed to be wide-eyed and chewing for centuries. But not the sight of a man.

“I'd better put up for the night when we get in. I'd better think things over. It's time I did.” Standing up to stretch himself he saw with horror that he was still wearing the same suit.

“I meant to get rid of this damned thing, and buy a new one. I just forgot. She never noticed it at all.” The train careered madly down the remaining few hundred yards of track, and came to a halt. He got out and handed in his ticket. Then he noticed the mast of the ship, and the flag that flew. He hurried out of the station.

“That'll do me,” he told himself, seeing the hotel in front of him. “I really am beginning to move, at last.” He went quickly up the steps, saw the bar-room and went inside. He sat down and called for a drink.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” he said.

“Whisky.”

“Yes, sor.”

It came, and he drank. He looked at the bar tender.

“What's lying here at the moment?” he asked.

“The usual old cattle box,” replied the man, “and a tramp. German, I think.”

“Thank you.”

Picking up the morning paper he scanned the headlines.

“Not very good news,” he exclaimed as he caught the barman's eye.

“Sorry, sor, but I've never read a newspaper since the troubles was ended.”

“Nothing looks too good,” he thought. “The ships are still rotting in Gelton, and something is rotting in England. Sailors are now standing on their heads because they're so bloody tired of standing on their feet in the wrong places.”

The world, viewed from that position, seemed very like the one he was reading about in the big black headlines.

“I expect they'll get what they want in the end, another war, and that'll settle everybody's hash, and everybody's problem.”

“Whisky,” he said.

“Coming, sor.”

“Thank you. What time does your cattle box sail?”

“The usual time, sor.”

“How long's the other one been lying here?”

“Near a week now.”

“What makes you think she's a German?”

“The crew come up here of an evening, sor. That's how it is.”

“I wonder what her business is?”

“Next stop Valparaiso, so they tell me.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sor. I think you're from these parts, if you'll excuse me.”

“You are excused, and I'm not from these parts, and no part in particular.”

The barman smiled. “No, sor, of course not.”

Peter ran his finger round and round the rim of his glass. The barman began to polish up the brass.

“I wonder what shell do? I wonder why it happened. I wonder
why
she went back to Rath Na? She touched me years ago in that miserable little street, and it's lasted forever.”

He saw her again, in the little street, in the room, he saw her on the ship, and in the cell, on the long road and the short road. He saw her back in the mausoleum, in the big room, in the bed, at its extreme edge, her head right back and her hands pressed to her eyes. He thought of the words that would never come out. One touched, one loved, at one's peril.

“Nothing is certain in my life, nothing. My God! Here I am sitting in this bloody little hotel, and I don't even know what I shall do or where I'll go. I daren't look back, I daren't.” He called across to the barman.

“Will they be over here this evening?”

“Who, sor?”

“Who d'you think? The hands off the German boat.”

“Of course. I already told you they comes up here in the evening.”

“
Thank
you.” He finished off his drink, and went over to the reception desk and booked a room for the night. He took the key and went upstairs. A simple room, of whitewashed walls, and
only
the necessary things. From the window he saw the deck of the cattle boat, and lying at her stern the silent, deck-deserted German tramp.

“I'll never come back to this country again, never.” Quickly he shut his eyes against what was already rising to confront him.

“There is one postcard for you, Miss Fetch, and there is one letter for the lady.”

“Give them me.”

He handed in the morning's post.

“Nothing for him?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Not that it matters very much. They have both gone,” she said.

She gave Mr. Cullen a long look, and then added, “You'd better come in.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“And there's no need to my dear me,” Miss Fetch said.

“No, ma'm. As you wish.
Just as you wish
. Down in the Foxes last night we was talking about them two. We wondered why on earth she'd come back.”

“I expect she just wanted to see her old home again. It's not unnatural, is it?”

“Not at all, ma'm.”

“This way,” Miss Fetch said.

“Thank you. It's very good of you indeed, I must say.”