The Furys (76 page)

He pulled out a pipe, lighted it, and was soon sending clouds of blackish-blue smoke into the air. He put his hands in his pockets, stretched out his legs on the path, and assumed an attitude of complete repose. He evidently was in no hurry.

‘Yes,' replied the woman, ‘I am still thinking about what you said. Did you think I should forget how significant you made it?' She laughed, but did not turn round.

‘Don't think I'm joking, Fanny,' said Mr. Fury. ‘I was never more in earnest.'

‘Aren't you always in earnest?' she shot back at him. ‘This sudden desire to go to sea is not new. Indeed no! I've felt it all along. I've seen it. I'm not blind. The pity of it is that you didn't go when you first got the itch. That's what I regret. Instead, you calmly inform me that unless I agree to give up my son you'll go off. Denny, for God's sake have no qualms about it. If you think I am going to accept that, you've made a mistake. Besides, it's a mean advantage to take. If you were a young man I shouldn't mind. But to suddenly announce your desire to go off at the age of sixty comes as a surprise, naturally. You will tell me no doubt that I was the cause of your giving it up.' She turned round and looked at him, smiled, and it was not without bitterness, and then turned her back upon him again. The man knocked out his pipe. The silence was broken, therefore the smoking of a pipe seemed quite out of place, at least to Mr. Dennis Fury, who held that a pipe can only be smoked properly when one is content. Somehow the waters of content had flowed over his head. He looked at his watch. There was that pint to have at ‘The Star and Garter,' a traditional ritual that must be observed whatever the cost. Putting the pipe away, he moved up nearer his wife. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘I'm in earnest. You can choose between the boy and me. Nobody was more surprised than I when he turned up again. I thought he would have sense to keep away. After the trouble he's caused. Come to think of it, I have every right to say this. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and I never have. I have always been contented.'

‘What a bitter truth!' said Mrs. Fury. ‘Well, go on.'

‘I'll be contented now. But not with him in the house. For the love of Christ get this out of your head—this crazy idea that Peter is still a boy. He isn't. He's a man. He's eighteen now. You can't have your cake and eat it. Hanged I am if I understand. After all that's happened—you hang on—you hang on'—he spoke these words through closed teeth—‘you hang on like grim death. You think that everything will come right in the end. But what is everything? What is right? That we should waste our years away just to please our children. To have the satisfaction of thinking we've still got them—they're still ours. Still our children. Don't be daft, Fanny. You're always crying out for peace, yet you haven't the patience to be content when it comes along. Make no mistake at all. If that fellow has the same feelings for us as he had five years ago, then I'm a bloody Frenchman. Well, I'm not going into any pasts or looking into any future. I'm looking at now—this day and this minute, and I'm making up my mind on a subject which must be gnawing the heart out of you. Be reasonable. Let the lad go. Be honest! Ask him straight to his face if he is content, if he likes being at home. You'll get your answer soon enough. But I rather think you're afraid to ask that. It might be so true for you. Understand this. I said I'm going away. It won't take me five minutes to get a ship.'

‘Get your ship and go,' replied the woman. She spoke quite calmly, without trace of anger or disappointment. It was almost as though she had momentarily expected it.

‘All right,' replied the man. ‘I'll skip off for a wet. Maybe you can think over things better when I am gone.'

He got up and without another word left the park. She followed his retreating figure with half-closed eyes. Then she completely relaxed, and made herself more comfortable upon the bench. An old man joined her, and soon the rhythmic tapping of his stick began to beat upon her brain. She, too, got up and went off. She walked quickly towards Hatfields. Another argument, and an unfinished one. They were all like that. No doubt Denny was thinking over the matter, sitting before his historic pint of beer in ‘The Star and Garter.' As she passed up the back entrance of Hatfields the woman paused, stamped her foot, and exclaimed, ‘I'd like to fly.' Then she passed into the house. Her son was sitting at a table, busily engaged in making a rope mat. He looked up as she entered and said, ‘Hello, Mother.'

‘Hello,' she said, and sat down without removing her clothes. She looked at the figure of an old man seated in a black high-backed chair. This man was her father, a cripple; an affliction made even more terrible by a stroke with which he had been seized some three years previously, and which had left him quite deaf and dumb. Mrs. Fury looked at the figure. The son, wearing only blue trousers and a sailor's jersey, left off his job, and looked from one to the other. ‘Are you unwell, Mother?' he asked, but without the slightest trace of concern in his voice, to which the woman replied, ‘Unwell? What ridiculous questions you ask.' She looked him full in the eyes and said, ‘Do you know that your father is going to sea again?'

‘Dad going to sea? What for?'

‘That's what I asked him. He told me that if you remained here he would go.' She got up from the chair, and went to the table. She leaned across it, and took her son's hands and said slowly, ‘Peter! You have done outrageous things, but you are still my son. Do you understand? My last child! I told your father he could go.' She looked into those deep, full eyes, brown like her own, and realized at once the impression she had created. Suddenly she went round the table, bent down and threw her arms round her son. ‘Peter! You mustn't go. Do you understand? You are all I have.' Her head was almost touching his flushed face.

He wanted to cry out, ‘Don't! Stop it! Don't do that!' but the words froze in his mouth. He could not speak. Gently he forced himself away from the attention of his mother. He folded his arms, and said, ‘Dad is only joking, and if he isn't he is only being ridiculous at his age. It's laughable. But now I see why he did not shake hands.'

‘But I did not refuse,' the mother said. He saw the expression upon her face, he saw clearly too this pathetic effort, this pathetic and desperate reaching out of her love. She was afraid. ‘How Mother is changed,' he thought. ‘She commands no more. Only pleads.' His homecoming had been awkward—it revived the memories of the past, and of that scene at the docks. Shame returned and he battled desperately to climb above it. But now seeing her like this it was even more awkward. Pleading to him. It was humiliating. It made him feel callous, brutal. ‘Mother,' he said. ‘Don't take any notice of what Dad says. Please don't.' He got up from the table and went out into the hall, returning with his outdoor coat and his shoes. He put on the shoes whilst he said, ‘I'm going out now. I've watched Grand-dad from half-past five.'

‘You see, Peter? I never say no, now. I never say anything. I am quite content really. I mean, I never asked you where you were till midnight last night. You see, I don't interfere. But your father asked and I said to him, “Peter promised me something twelve months ago, and I don't believe he will fail me.” That's what I said last night. That was what we were talking about when you came upstairs.' The son said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. He was free now. He was not going to be caught in that net again—that net of her love, and hope, and belief. He had had quite enough of that. A pathetic net, hollow and worn. Before she had commanded—now she begged. Was his mother really trying to catch his father in it, and not him, later—was she? In that poor net. ‘I'm afraid,' he said in his mind. ‘I'm afraid, and she's afraid; we are both afraid. Even now she hates—
hates
to leave hold of me.'

‘Mother,' he said, ‘dear Mother! Stop thinking about this now. Don't talk about it. If you have feelings so have I, and I have been made to know that I have feelings. Let Dad talk to me. It will be a change, won't it? Since ever I was born I've heard nothing but wrangling in the house between Dad and you. Now you keep out of it. Any talking to be done he can do, and so can I. You go off as you arranged. Understand? Don't even worry yourself about me, or about Dad. Anyhow, I don't believe a single word he said. Honest, I don't. He would
never
do it. Really, he's too soft-hearted, Dad is. He would have gone long ago if he had really wanted—but he never did—and he knows it. All he wanted was everybody out of the house—even Granddad, but he never told people straight out. That's what you were talking about last night?' he concluded.

Mrs. Fury nodded her head. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘That's what we were talking about. But now get off. I don't want to keep you, I'm sure.' She smiled up at her son.

‘Stop talking like that, Mother. Stop it.' Peter struck the table with his fist.

‘Don't do it. It makes me feel unutterably mean, and I have no right to think it. After all, everybody makes mistakes. You did—and I did—we all do.' He watched the working of the muscles of the woman's face. She hunched her shoulders. It gave one the impression that at any moment she would burst out into a fit of the most hysterical laughter. He went up to her—held her hands. ‘Dear Mother! you have been good.' Then he touched her ear with his mouth.

‘Listen! am I the only one who knows about this Mrs. Ragner transaction?'

She gripped his hands and held them in a vice-like grip as she replied almost in a whisper, ‘Yes. You are the only one I told. I mean, it's my affair, and in a way yours.'

‘Don't be cruel to me. Don't be cruel to me,' he suddenly shouted in her face. He picked up his coat and left the house. Mrs. Fury remained quite rigid where she stood.

Peter Fury walked quickly away from Hatfields. In the next street but one his married sister lived. It was to see her that he was now hurrying. ‘I must talk to Maureen about Dad. It's really bad, and not fair to Mother: Dad is getting on his high horse.' There were other reasons why he wished to see her. There was her child just twelve months old—there was Joseph Kilkey. When he reached the Kilkeys' door he lifted his hand to knock, but stopped suddenly to listen to the peculiar sound that seemed to come from the parlour. Mr. Joseph Kilkey was standing in the middle of the parlour floor swinging a child in his arms, as he sang, ‘Tiddley-iddly-tiddley-iddly hi ti-tiddley iddly hi ti.' Peter Fury rapped on the window, at the same time pressing his nose against the glass. ‘Open the door,' he called through. The man hurried out into the lobby.

‘Well! By God! Well! By God!' He laid the child over one shoulder, and with his free hand grasped Peter's arm, pulling him into the house. ‘Well, I never! This
is
a surprise. Maureen's out at Confession.' Peter followed the man into the kitchen. Joseph Kilkey pulled out a chair, saying, ‘Sit down! Sit down.'

‘Well, you are changed, anyhow,' said Peter Fury as he studied the bald-headed man in front of him. Somehow he had never been able to fully accept Mr. Joseph Kilkey as a brother-in-law. His sister's marriage had been one of those impossible things, a phenomenon—something never expected. But here was the boy. ‘Let me hold him, Joe,' said Peter, and picked up the fat, slobbering baby in his arms.

‘What a fine kid, isn't he now? And look at his forehead. Bound to be something.'

Peter held its plump soft hands in his, the while the boy looked at him bewilderedly out of eyes that were blue and large as saucers. ‘What big eyes, too!' Peter said. Apparently his survey and report upon the first nephew he had ever had now came to an end, for he handed back the child to Mr. Kilkey, when it immediately began to cry. ‘Do you like him much?' asked Peter.

‘Listen to that! Listen to that, duckins,' shouted Mr. Kilkey, jumping up from his chair and swinging the boy up and down in the air. ‘Your uncle actually asks me if I like you much?' The child's cries became louder.

‘I hope Maureen won't be long,' said Joseph Kilkey. ‘I'm tired. Just got home from work, and I have to be out extra early to-morrow.' He sat down and began dancing the child upon his knee.

‘There is something I could never have imagined,' Peter was saying to himself—‘and it's my ever seeing myself sitting in this kitchen looking at Joe Kilkey, my own brother-in-law.' He who when he was a boy used to chase him with a strap every time he appeared in the little recreation hall of St. Sebastian's, of which Mr. Kilkey was both caretaker and honorary secretary. And that fat, crying baby on his knee. ‘I wonder what Maureen looks like,' he asked himself. Mr. Kilkey said, ‘Smoke if you want to, Peter. Dermod's quite used to my shag, so your cigs. can't hurt him. Well, you have come on. No doubt about it. You'd make two of any of the family, and certainly three of me. Are you glad you went? Did you like the life? D'you think you'll stick the sea-life? By Jove!'

Joseph Kilkey for the second time got out of his chair, and now began making circles round the one in which the youth sat, like a judge at a prize show, surveying, commenting. ‘I'm right glad you're settling down to something, Peter. Your mother must be too. She's had a rough time. Now is your chance to repay all she's done.'

Peter looked away from the man. Here it was again. The same old song, ‘Shouldn't have done what you did. Say you're sorry you did it.' He switched off that subject.

‘Are you getting regular work now, Joe?' asked Peter. His eyes roved the mantelpiece until they fell upon what he sought—a small box inlaid with pearl which he had bought at Patras and sent home to his sister as a present ‘to keep the baby's pins in,' as he said on the note Mrs. Kilkey discovered inside it. ‘I wish Maureen would hurry,' he went on, seeing no desire on Joseph Kilkey's part to be communicative about his work. Perhaps work was sacred to him, and a thing too intimate to be mentioned. How ugly the man was! But how good!