An End and a Beginning (14 page)

There was a pause in Miss Fetch's reflections, then of a sudden she cried aloud, “Can one have such a thing as a silly soul?” She wasn't quite sure. “I'm now asked to look after a man who walks in on me out of the very blue. No, I'm too old and too tired for that sort of thing. A house shouldn't just be used
anyhow
. Once upon a time this place was one of the most beautiful in the whole country, and it had the sea's breath on it, and every balmy air, and all the lovely soft lights played about in its rooms. And now …” Had she in that moment looked in the mirror she would have seen herself smiling. She put her hand to her mouth, furtively laughed. “I haven't forgotten that last visitor from Gelton.”

With the coming of morning her hopes rose, and as the day wore on she began assuring herself that perhaps, after all,
she
had thought better of it, they had changed their minds. But at half-past four, the telegram, delivered by a protesting and grumbling Mr. Cullen, put an end to her hopes. She was
not
to be left alone; she was not to have her peace.

And Cullen had climbed up the long hill for the second time, exploding, cursing the Big House, waving in his hand the envelope that was as yellow as a daffodil. “Arriving nine-thirty. Fury.” The office of origin said Cork. That was enough.

“Whoever he is, he's here,” she told herself. “Now I must start tracking back, through all the peaceful nights and days, go right away back to the grind. Waiting on this man, looking after this man. Supposing he took it into his head to murder me in my bed? H'm! The brother of the other fellow, that clumsy elephant of a man. Ah! I'll never understand how she came to be mixed up with that lot. Gutter scourings, without a doubt.”

She felt irritation, and irritation grew to anger, resentment. It confused her. “I must start all over again. I hope to God they're not all thinking of returning here. I'd walk out at once. I would indeed. That would be the last straw. Ah! Something's gone right out of Rath Na, and not all the heart's warming will put it back again. Certainly I don't believe the Colonel will ever put his foot this way. There's the son, of course. He may marry, bring his wife here. But how different it's going to be.”

The. flames of the fire were dying down. “If only this silly, headstrong woman had told me how long this man was going to be here, if she'd written properly, explaining. And it's not right at all for two strange creatures of different sexes to be living alone under the one roof like this.”

Anger would no longer allow her to be still. She moved about the great house as in a dream. She went to the son's room, took away the dust sheets, aired the bedclothes, removed the sail-cloth from the floor. She dusted and polished, and always she tried to visualize this man, the one who was coming there. What was he really like? “A month or two, may be a year or two,” she thought, “at least to people who never had any sense of time at all. It's all terrible, this disturbing me like this.”

The morning grew. The afternoon she spent wandering from room to room, looking out of one window, and then another, trying doors, inspecting locks. She went to the kitchen, her practical mind already pondering over food, oil, light. This was going to mean leaving the house, struggling down to the village. A hateful matter. Sundays she did not mind; she enjoyed going off to the early Mass, and, if the weather was fine, to the evening service also. So far she had found the local tradespeople fairly obliging. Their doughty errand boys struggled up to Rath Na with baskets and boxes. It was going to be different, a new day, a new time, and she dreaded it, hated it. The casual nature of the note from Gelton made her at once suspicious. After years of silence and isolation, Miss Fetch felt she was being uprooted.

Like a sentry she patrolled the rooms as the darkness came down, candle in hand, listening, waiting, watching, and hearing only in vastness of house the monotonous tick of a clock. She had pottered about in the kitchen, getting ready a meal, putting a stone water-bottle in the visitor's bed. And, finally, she had sought the seclusion of her own room. There she sat staring at the fire, and after an hour and a half, the visitor had not arrived. “Perhaps he's not coming after all, perhaps something has happened, perhaps he's changed his mind about it. Maybe she herself has thought better of it. No. I can't hear a sound at all.” She dozed.

“Why, it's nearly midnight. He
can't
be coming. Oh, I hope he's not. I wonder why I feel so angry about this. Perhaps one should be charitable, I don't know, I'm not used to that sort of thing,” and she went on talking to herself. The clock struck one. “He isn't coming.”

Then, quite suddenly, her sharp ears heard the sound of boots on the gravel. “It's him. He has come. And I hoped he would not.”

She hurried down, and in the rush of air the candle flamed like a torch. She stood in the cold, draughty hall, and waited for his knock. When it came the door opened as though by magic. The man on the step was astonished. “She must have been there all the time,” he thought, “waiting.”

As she sat in her cosy little room, Miss Fetch had gone back, little by little, thread by thread, over the whole disturbing day. She had not retired to her bed, and certainly she was not sleeping. After seeing to the visitor's room she had gone straight to her own. She had supplied him with his hot meal, the rationed light.

“Imagine a man arriving at Rath Na for a two months' stay, a month, even a week's stay, and not a thing with him. Not even an overcoat. He's very tall, just like the other one that was here a few years back, and he seems just as clumsy. He lacks something. You notice these things very quickly. Never seen one like him in this house before to-day. Well, in the morning we shall see each other very clearly, and I hope we shall understand one another's minds. But just imagine it! All that way across the water, and not even an overcoat.”

The overcoat loomed large in her mind, and it continually astonished. “Fancy sending any man all that distance without a good strong coat to his back, in this horrible weather. Surely somebody could have got him a coat.”

Until three o'clock in the morning Miss Fetch read the revelations of St. Theresa. At a quarter past three she removed her slippers, and crept silently away to the bedroom. She felt it as a humiliating act. She had
never
before had to do a thing like this. She was afraid to wake him, she knew she was afraid. She got into bed, and lay very still. She recited a decade of the rosary, for her own protection, for the protection of Rath Na. She fell asleep with the beads in her hands.

Through the open window came the hoot of an owl. And at half-past seven the alarm clock woke her up. Immediately she got out of bed and dressed. Then she knelt down and said her morning prayers. There was one other prayer to add. “Oh God! Protect us this day from all evil things, protect this house.”

She wore her long black dress, fastened at the throat by a single, large bone brooch. This she never failed to wear. The brooch of Saint Theresa was always pinned there. It was like a flag, proclaiming at her soul's mast-head the triumph of the true religion. She picked up her great bundle of keys, and fastened the cord about her. She then went downstairs.

Having lighted a fire in the kitchen, she began getting the breakfast things together. She had decided that during his stay her visitor should eat in the kitchen. The dining-room had been closed for years, and she saw no reason for opening it. As she went about her work her mind was full of the man upstairs. “I thought the night would never pass away. How glad I am to see the daylight.”

This was the very first time that Rath Na's housekeeper had had a man in the house. She sat down and began her own breakfast, some toast, an egg, tea. She listened for sounds, a voice, footsteps, but the place remained silent. She finished her breakfast, and cleared away her crockery. As she put it away in the cupboard she noticed the time. It was half-past eight o'clock.

“I suppose I'd better let him know the breakfast is ready.” To-day it might be all right, but there was to-morrow, and the next day, all the afternoons and evenings. What were they going to say to each other. She hoped he wouldn't just sit around; perhaps he might do some digging in the kitchen garden. But she supposed he would make his way down to the village. “I expect he drinks. Those people always do.”

Passing into the hall she went to the foot of the stairs. Should she call him? Against the wall stood the gong. It was covered with dust. Suddenly the whole house shook from the force of the blow that Miss Fetch delivered to it. With its sounds still circling her ears, she returned to the kitchen, and waited. Seated by the now climbing fire of the stove, she made a note in her mind about arrangements with Mr. Cullen to take a note to the grocer. The house was silent again.

“He must have heard that, surely. Why a deaf man would have heard it. He must be deep asleep not to.”

On the spur of the moment she decided to go and see. And having found her way to the bedroom, she stood hesitating outside the door. She knocked. She knocked again. There was no reply. She felt annoyed.

“It's nearly nine o'clock.”

A pause.

“Are you awake in there?”

Silence.

The moment she lifted her hand she realized that she was afraid to knock. The hand remained in the air. “Are you awake there? Are you awake there, Mr.——”

She had for a moment forgotten his name. She was lost in a sudden wave of confusion. She knocked again, waited.

“The breakfast is ready, waiting you. Please be good enough to come down at once. I cannot wait on you all morning.” And nothing had happened. She turned the door handle, and pushed gently. She peeped round the door. The room was empty. She stepped inside. Her heart leapt, and she exclaimed under her breath, “He's gone. Oh, thank heaven for that. He's gone.”

Seeing everything left so neat and tidy, she felt doubly certain of it. “He's thought better of it perhaps, he's——”, and now she noticed that there lay on the table at his bedside, a packet of cigarettes, matches, a wallet, a small heap of coins, and two photographs. She crossed the room and stood looking at them. After a while she bent down and picked up the wallet and put them away, took up the coins, the man walked into the room. The photographs fluttered to the floor, and standing behind her, he saw them fall.

“I thought you'd gone,” she said, not looking at him.

“Why?”

“I don't know, it just came into my mind this minute, I came up here to tell you your breakfast is ready, and by this time it's almost cold, I shouldn't wonder.”

“I went for a walk. I like walking.”

In silence he bent down and retrieved the photographs, picked up the wallet and put them away, took up the coins the cigarettes and the matches.

“I rang the gong,” she said.

“I was out, I told you that.”

“You had better go and have your breakfast,” Miss Fetch said.

“Thank you,” he said, and immediately left her.

Long after the door had closed, Miss Fetch was still standing there. “A walk,” she thought, “at that hour of the morning.”

It was to be the first of many.

“The feet,” Miss Fetch said, “the murdering feet,” clutching in her hand the metal crucifix attached to the end of her rosary.

They stamped through the house, through her room, through her dreams. She did not think she would ever forget them. Miss Fetch could only think of some mad captain, tramping about in the wilderness of his ship, a cold, empty, and rocking ship. Up and downstairs, in and out of doors, through passages, around corners, she heard them everywhere, restless, aimless. Always tramping, always moving somewhere, never still.

“There he is,” she said, “there he goes again.” She sat still in her chair. On this late afternoon she had stood at her window, watching the last of the light go, and feeling suddenly shivery, she was glad to get back to the warmth of the fire, the flames of which sent shadows dancing on the stone-washed wall. She found herself slowly studying this room, with something of surprise, as though it had come to her in a flashing moment that inside its walls she had lived this thirty years. “Just imagine that. I've lived in this room just over thirty whole years.”

There was the sewing-machine and the work-basket, still standing under the window. There, hanging on the wall, was the same corner cupboard, there “The Annunciation” hanging by her reading table. She looked at the mantelpiece, on which stood the two small blue vases containing the artifical roses, and between them her ivory crucifix. And handy by the armchair, the bookcase, loaded with lives, miracles, revelations, theological problems, burning faith, the aura of mystery. On three short shelves, arranged like armies, sentinels, and watchful angels, lay God and Miss Fetch's battlefield. An escape hole, the tunnel to the light, ultimate, final. She watched the burning candles. She looked at the photograph of the stone-faced man that stood between them. Her father.

She looked at her pile of sewing, her embroidery, her crochetwork, the Communion-white cloths, the heavenly sails on the calm sea, into which, Miss Fetch, after forty-six years, had steered her life. This sea was soundless, and she had watched its waves recede farther and farther, and they carried on their surface the spirit and substance of one burning hope, one great ambition. Under this soundless sea the lighthouse had vanished. “Thirty-two years. Think of it. Just fancy that,” she reflected, as she clutched the crucifix, as she listened to the tireless feet, tramping about the house, tramping on her heart, her soul, into her peace. “Those feet make the house rock.”

She stared down at the red carpet, the footstool, the spirit stove, the kettle, the pan. Quite casually, she picked up a thick book in a red-cloth binding, and opening it, she glanced at the writing on its pages, and under her breath she read.