The Secret Journey (65 page)

Laughing, he said, ‘Bosh! Now I'm going. Good-morning.'

‘Good-morning,' she said, and lay down. Then she blew out the candle.

He called back suddenly,' I may be late to-night, Mother. Very late.'

‘Why?'

‘Working on a big job. Ta-ta.' She heard him running down the stairs.

‘Yes, by God! My hand is shaky. I must have a cold.' He packed a few slices of bread in paper and put it in his pocket. Then he sat down to a hot mug of tea. ‘Twenty minutes yet,' he said to himself. He was all ready for work. Changed, a clean pair of overalls, clean muffler. He stood in front of a small mirror standing against the teapot and brushed back his mop of hair with his hands. ‘It's far too long. Must get it cut. I wonder if that witch will really come down here? Oh well! What does it matter?' He went to the bottom cupboard, and from it took an old diddybag of his father's. He opened it and groped about among its contents. He found what he wanted. A large sheath-knife. He slipped it into its canvas cover and put it in the back pocket of his trousers. Then he turned off the gas-stove and went out. He saw a light in the Postlethwaites' top bedroom window. It splashed the roadway. Down at the other end of Hatfields a door banged, and a man's hob-nailed boots began beating a tattoo upon the pavement. Then he vanished round the corner.

Ten minutes to six. Still ten minutes to six. Still ten minutes to go. He turned out of Hatfields into Price Street. He looked up at the Kilkeys' house. He hadn't seen Maureen for a week. He went down Price Street, crossed into St. Sebastian Place and stopped outside the chapel. It was open. Only a single light seemed to be burning inside. He went in. The place smelt stuffy, as though there was yet some stale incense floating about in the air from the previous evening's Benediction. The chapel was empty, except that a woman kept travelling to and fro from the altar to the vestry. ‘Must be dressing the altar. Let me see! What feast day is this? I can't remember.' He knelt in the bottom bench. As he looked towards the altar he imagined that the woman arranging the flowers in the vases was his mother. He could even see himself there, carrying the heavy book round to the left side of the altar for the Last Gospel. How long ago that seemed, and whilst he stared at the crossing form passing up and down the steps, and whilst his thoughts were of the day when he had muttered his ‘Et cum spirita tuo' with such innocent heart, he began reciting the ‘Hail, Mary' in a low voice. He recited like an automaton, he seemed quite unconscious that words were falling from his lips. He kept his eyes on the altar. At two minutes to six he got up, made a hurried and it seemed a begrudging genuflection, and left the chapel. He went straight to the Loco Shed.

At nine o'clock Mrs. Fury got up and called Anthony. He yawned and got back again. She went into his room.

‘Anthony, please get up. Please get up. A funny feeling has come over me. Do come downstairs, I can't sit by myself.'

‘Ah! Oh, Mother, don't be silly! All right. I'll be down in a second.' He got up and dressed. ‘Blast it! I can't see head or tail of this. How can they come down here and ship everything we've got? I've a bloody mind to go and see her myself.' Dressed, he went downstairs. Not a sign of breakfast. His mother was sitting at the table. She had a pencil in her hand, a sheet of notepaper in front of her was scribbled over.

‘Sit down! I've just tortured myself for over an hour. Look! I'll do what you said. Here is a message, will you send it for me from the Post Office?'

‘Now you're talking, Mother! I'm certain Aunt Brigid will do it.' He picked up the telegram. ‘Is there any breakfast, tea or anything?'

‘Yes, get your coat on. I'll pour some out for you.' Suddenly she put down the cup, gripped her son round the waist, and held him.

‘Oh, Anthony, I hate myself for this. I am thoughtless. Here you are running around like a madman, and your poor feet hardly mended yet. But listen!' There was something fierce, something electric about the woman as she held her son. ‘I've always done my best for you all. I've been afraid of nothing. Nothing!' She shouted a second time, ‘Nothing,' and then concluded in a sort of whisper, ‘but I
am
afraid of this woman.'

He went out with the telegram. ‘Yes, it's real! It's real,' he kept saying to himself as he limped down Hatfields to the Post Office. ‘It's real. And her disgrace if anything happens. Mother'll never hold up her head again. Aye, and every beggar in the street talking. Oh, Aunt, you must help, you must help! You mustn't ask questions. Just help Mother right away. She's always been decent to you.'

He entered the Post Office. For the first time he was conscious of shame. The telegram form lay there, and yet it was so simple. A few words, ‘Mangan, Nine The Mall, Cork. I need your help. Urgent. Fanny.' Quite simple, but how hard to write it out. The cry of somebody in the gutter, and his mother had never been in the gutter. Well! It was written, and now he must hand it to the man behind the grill. The words, ‘I need your help,' began dancing in his brain, he could see them a foot long, lying right down the whole length of the counter. And the whole staff were now reading those huge words, ‘I need your help. Urgent. Fanny.' He pushed the message under the grill, put down two shillings, and hurried out of the Post Office. He never thought of change, he only thought of his mother, of her fear, of her misery, of the way she had taken this. ‘Mother's still wrong about Aunt Brigid,' he kept saying as he returned slowly to the house. ‘Well, my ship will be here next week, and I'll be out of it. Have to. Nothing else for it. Must work, and be bloody glad to have it.' He went in by the back door.

‘Did you send it?' she asked.

‘Yes, it's gone. Reply paid, too. There can't be any mistake. Breakfast? Good! A good cup of strong tea, a slice of fried bacon, and some nice fried bread. Aren't you having any?' he asked her.

‘I've had mine. Give me a cup of tea, anyhow.' She held out her cup. ‘God, I dread it! Dread it!' Twice she spilt tea on her blouse, a clean one only put on that very morning. ‘Anthony, we'll have that celebration one fine day,' she said. She finished her tea. Anthony went into the parlour; a few minutes later he returned to the kitchen, then went back to the parlour. Finally he went upstairs.

At a quarter to twelve a reply came from Ireland. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Fury,' she said,' no answer.' She stared at the buff envelope. She dropped it, picked it up again. ‘Anthony,' she called. ‘Anthony.'

‘Coming! Coming, Mother!'

‘Here's your aunt's reply. Open it. I can't, I'm——Oh, what does she say?'

‘“Impossible. Father and I leaving for Lourdes to-morrow. Brigid.”'

‘Lourdes! With Father! What does that mean?'

Mr. Anthony Mangan had not only survived his long journey home, he was on the eve of another. Had he but known it, he had become an important person overnight. Brigid Mangan had now been home a week. She was met at the quay by an ambulance, out of this vehicle had emerged three people, Father Twomey, Mr. Patrick O'Toole, and Miss Hegarty. Handshakes, smiling faces, kind enquiries about the invalid. How well she looked, never looked better. The woman was actually getting younger instead of older. Really, it was amazing what sheer determination and self-confidence could do, and now, how was the old man? Brigid Mangan, smiling, was brief and to the point. ‘He is splendid. He has managed very well. You might almost have thought the old man smelt his native land from a far, far distance.' And the trip itself? Miss Mangan merely said, ‘Very nice indeed, no trouble at all.' And that was all. And how was everybody in Gelton? Father Twomey learned in two words. ‘Very well.'

In fact, the whole world in this triumphant moment was very well indeed. A very fine place to live in. Mr. Mangan, after much trouble, was transferred to the ambulance. The four people sat on the seat opposite the stretcher, and the party moved off towards the Mall. Now and again one or other of them bent forward to look upon this figure—this flesh that was dead, and yet not bad. This dumb, paralytic figure.

‘Poor man! A long death-bed for him.'

Everybody agreed with the priest. Mr. Patrick O'Toole looked at his old friend, and said to himself, ‘Anthony, my good man, where have you put that bit of money you had?' Yes, what had he done with it? Brigid Mangan was full of enquiries, enquiries that concerned the health of various clerical friends, one or two parishioners.

‘You're looking very well yourself, Father,' she remarked to the priest. Smiling, Father Twomey said he always was.

‘Lucky man!' said Mr. O'Toole. The two men fell into whispered conversation. Miss Hegarty and Brigid Mangan talked about the cat. The silent figure on the stretcher was well clear of the world, and of things human. The ambulance rolled on. Rays of bright sunlight poured through the ventilator. At last, the Mall, and home. Everybody sat to attention.

‘Here we are,' said Brigid. Yes, here they were, and the ambulance came to a halt. All alighted. Brigid Mangan searched in her bag for the key, and then suddenly remembered she had left it with her friend, who had already walked up the path and opened the door. Father Twomey and Mr. O'Toole stood by to watch the two attendants draw Mr. Mangan out.

‘Go in, Brigid,' said the priest. ‘We'll see to this,' and Brigid went in.

Twenty minutes later the ambulance had gone. Anthony Mangan lay between clean white sheets. ‘He would hardly sleep the first night,' was the thought in Miss Mangan's mind. ‘Her father was in a clean bed, a new bed, he was in her own home again, after all those years. How could any man sleep on his first night? Yes, and especially when one remembered the kind of bed that had been his for nine long years. But she supposed Fanny had done her best. Yet after a while even the kindest people become indifferent, and it might be that in the last two years her father had had a pretty thin time! Such were Brigid's thoughts. ‘Still, we can thank God for a safe journey and an uneventful journey.'

One after another the visitors departed. Mr. O'Toole was the last to go. Miss Mangan walked with him to the gate. He was full of praise.

‘It was you, Brigid, who should have gone from Ireland. You would have made your road anywhere. Now I keep asking myself why for all those years I never came near to see the old man. Hear me? But then I'm old myself, old, Brigid, and old people have funny ideas, haven't they? God be with the times now gone! I'm grieved, Brigid, grieved. I never knew he was so ill, that he had the stroke. God bless us all—I nearly jumped out of my own skin when I saw the man. He's like a shrivelled-up little boy. Well, now I have to be off, or else Miss Duffy will be wondering where on earth I've got to.'

‘And you'll come round first thing in the morning?' asked Miss Mangan.

‘Yes!' said Mr. O'Toole as he drew back the rusty iron gate.

‘Why not come early?' she said. ‘Come for breakfast, Patrick.'

‘I'll see,' he said, ‘I'll see! It depends entirely on my rheumies. I have the rheumies bad these days—but listen at me, just listen at me complaining like a sour old woman, and that dear friend of mine upstairs who can't tell us how he suffers at all, at all. Good-night, mam!'

‘Good-night, Patrick,' said Miss Mangan, and stood at the gate watching him go down the road. ‘If he can't help me, nobody can,' she thought as she locked the gate and walked slowly back to the house. And there on the step was her little tortoise-shell friend. ‘Oh, you little beauty,' she said, and picking up the cat in her arms she held it to her face. She shut the door, locked it, and putting the cat down, went upstairs. ‘I must sleep in his room this night,' she said to herself. ‘To-morrow I must see the doctor.'

At half-past eight the following morning Mr. O'Toole arrived. Brigid Mangan welcomed him in. They began breakfast in the big stone-flagged kitchen. Miss Mangan's idea of frying ham was not quite to Mr. O'Toole's taste, but he was not the sort of gentleman to tell her. He preferred to skirmish obstinately round this large, thick, pink slice of Danish ham. He laid his egg in the middle of it and then commenced operations. Brigid Mangan pushed the bread plate across.

‘Help yourself,' she said. She had only a slice of fried bread on her plate. She doubted if she could even manage this. She didn't want to eat at all, really, and as she watched Mr. O'Toole making cautious circles round the ham she said, ‘Aren't you eating the ham, man? It's beautiful! It's best Irish ham, my dear.'

‘I'm enjoying it,' replied Mr. O'Toole.

‘Now,' she began, ‘I want your help. Tell me what you know. But before you begin I want you to understand this: I had
long long
ago decided to bring Father back here! that's all.' She cleared a space in front of her and rested her elbows on the table, looking at Patrick O'Toole.

‘If she leans forward any further she'll cover the whole table, and I'll disappear from sight eventually,' he said to himself. Well—he simply could
not
manage that ham—at least not the centre of it. He pushed the plate aside. ‘Of course, Brigid,' he said, ‘of course. Sure, I known the Mangans all me life. And at his great age—well, one never knows—God's will be done—well, one never knows. Though I suppose even if he had died over there, mam'—he had a habit of saying ‘mam,' even to his housekeeper—‘I suppose he could have come back here just the same.'

‘Dying in Gelton is not like dying in Ireland,' Miss Mangan commented. ‘But please go on! I can see you don't like my ham. However——'

‘Well, Brigid, mam, this I can say, and say with gospel truth—your father had money in a branch of the Hibernian. I know that, for I saw it with my own eyes that day he drew it out. How about that now? A few hundred—maybe three, maybe two, but nevertheless a few hundred.'