An End and a Beginning (29 page)

“A lovely dream she's having, indeed, the way she's going on about setting the place to rights again. What a silly woman. What age will she be now, surely turned forty, forty-one or two. They say it's a silly age in a woman. She'll never build anything here, never. What nonsense. And expecting her old father to want to come back here ending his days among the bones and shadows. Poor, silly Miss Downey.” She forced herself to make the tea, to lay a tray, to carry it up the stairs, forced herself to pause, to knock at the door, to open her mouth. “It's eight o'clock, ma'm,” she called out.

“Thank you, Winifred.”

“How calm her voice,” thought Miss Fetch, “how calm, as though nothing had ever happened.”

“I've brought the tea, ma'm.”

“Bring it in.”

“My God! I must take it in to her,” as the knuckles of her hands whitened under a pressure on the tray.

“I'll leave it outside,” Miss Fetch said, stooping to put it on the floor.

“Bring it in, Winifred.”

“Very well.” And she opened the door. She seemed to walk sideways across the floor, her eyes fixed on the tray.

“Good morning, Winifred,” she said, “we'll have it here.”

“
We'll,
” thought the housekeeper, “
we'll,
” and placed the tray on the bed.

“Thank you, Winifred. We'll have breakfast in the study.”

“Yes, ma'm,” she said, “Good morning, ma'm,” one eye fixed on Miss Downey's bare bosom, the other searching for the head of the man. But he is lost to sight, buried under sheeting. Sheila drew the shawl across her nakedness, smiled, and seemed to be waiting for the woman to go out. And she went out, fumbling at the knob, pulling open the door, shutting it noisily behind her, hearing only the sudden rattle of spoon in a cup.

“Brazen,” she told herself, “brazen.” She hurried to her room and shut the door. She knelt down at the bedside.

“I thank God I learned
my
lesson. The places my tiger would have led me,” and she prayed forgiveness for the sins of the world.

“I loved Miss Downey as a child, I loved her as a girl, as a most beautiful young woman, but I'll never forgive her for this. Never.” After a while she went downstairs to lay the table for breakfast. “No wonder these places went up in flames,” she thought, moving backwards, seeing the flames, hearing them. “Rath Na is no different to any of them. Not a bit.”

She returned to her kitchen, sat down and waited. She watched the clock. Half-past eight. Nine. Half-past nine, ten. Eleven o'clock.

“The kennels are open again.” She got up and bent over the range, lifted the lid of one and another pot, stirred, shook, put the kettle to the fire for the fourth time, and listened, and wondered, and saw the clock say half-past eleven. “Says we have to go right round the place to-day. Oh, she's going to work so hard. So hard,” and Miss Fetch smiled in mimicry, as she talked Miss Downey, as she waited for the man and the woman who had lain together. “Says I must return to my sister.”

The very words brought in their wake Miss Fetch's broadest smile. “Here they are.”

She heard them talking their way downstairs, heard sudden laughter in the cold hall, a heavy step and a light step. She served breakfast without seeing them, without feeling them, and she had nothing to say. The man had not looked at her, but sat there with his head a little forward. It could only be shame, she thought, and then she was aware of the woman speaking, saying to her, “I wish to see you in the laundry room after breakfast, Winifred.”

“Very well.”

The closing door still shuts out the world; they smile across at each other, they do not speak.

“I'm so happy,” he thought, “just sitting here, silent, having my breakfast and looking at her. God, I wish it could go on forever. I wonder what she's thinking of
now
, this very moment, I wish I could ask, I'm afraid to ask,” as though a single word might destroy their peace, their satisfaction. They drew it out of each other by an utter silence, and their persons glowed with the warmth of fulfilment. The rings upon her finger could not even remind him of another hand, yesterday was washed out to the sea. He knew she was looking at him, felt her eye, suddenly looked up, she seemed on the point of saying something, but she only smiled. She refilled his cup, handed him more toast. And then they were back in the world.

“I'll be busy to-day, dear,” she said. “You'll have to amuse yourself. Winifred and I have a lot of work to do.”

“You really intend to stay? Here? In this tomb?”

“It was always my home,” she said.

“You really mean to get rid of the housekeeper?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“It'll be a terrible blow, Sheila. She's been here a whole lifetime.”

“Forty-one years is a long time,” she said.

“Cigarette?”

“No thank you.”

“Why get rid of her. You may never find another as good. I didn't like her myself, not from the moment I set eyes on her, but that's neither here nor there. It seems a terrible wrench to one so set in her life. Does she know?”

“I told her yesterday.”

“You told her?”

“I'd a letter from her sister. She badly wants her to return home again. She's not without relations, and she's not without friends. I think her sister's lonely. They've their own cottage, and she works for the Murphys. She won't want for anything. Anybody who ever worked for us never did. Father always pensioned them off. She's had little to do in these last years, and I sometimes wondered why she stayed on at all. But she never wanted to go, and seemed quite contented. Of course, she has her friends, and she does much work for the Church, she belongs to various women's organizations. She's rarely without a visitor, and at one time it was even thought that she might marry Cullen, the postman. I believe he still calls here two evenings a week. Winifred's all right, she won't starve.”

“It's still a lifetime,” he thought, “a terrible wrench.”

“A pity she never married and had a family. What age would she be, Sheila?”

“Fifty-six or seven. Not more.”

“She looks much older than that, nearer seventy, I'd say. Another late marriage perhaps. It appears to be the thing. It seems strange to me, but I often feel that in this country people hug age like the child the doll. They only think of marrying when they're growing old.” They got up together and walked to the door. He put his arms around her and kissed her.

“You're not happy, and I wish you were,” he said. He had broken the spell; she immediately broke away from him and went out. He returned to the table and sat down.

“I
was
right. It's still that swine, Desmond. She still loves him. God! Who could imagine it, who
could
, after last night. We might have been the only man and woman on the whole earth. So real, so passionate. I wish I'd never wakened.”

He looked round the room. “It must have been wonderful here one time. Wonderful. Fancy throwing it all over, running away from it, the father as well, letting it sink, rot. And now she says she's going to live here, start all over again. I wonder. I wonder.”

He got up and went to the window. A fine dry day, perhaps he ought to go out. Perhaps that might please her. And she was going to be so busy with Miss Fetch. “Miss Fetch,” he thought, “she actually came in with early morning tea. Perhaps she's used to that sort of thing.”

He fiddled with a poker, disturbed the fire, and was still leaning over it when the housekeeper came in to clear away. He did not move; he felt he could not look at her. He heard the table being cleared. Her slow movements made him think of her old, made him think of that lifetime, and suddenly he wanted to go and speak to her, to say how sorry he was to hear she was leaving. He might not have been there, for through the small looking glass he had watched her, and she had not looked at him, but picked up the tray and walked out of the room.

“She probably hates both of us for being here at all.”

He lit another cigarette, then left the room, went quickly across the hall and up the stairs. He went to his room. He sat down on the bed. He looked at the still unopened letter. It still challenged, but he would not touch it. “I don't want to,” he thought, “I just don't want to. God knows who it's from, what it says,” holding on to his peace.

He picked it up again, groped in his mind for a clue to the writer, flung it down again. “It might well be that——”, and he again picked it up, and examined it. “No,” he thought. “No. Yesterday I talked my bloody life away to an old monk. I must begin again.” He put on his walking boots and went out. From the hallstand he picked up a stick. He walked round by the kitchen and looked in. No one there. “They've got their heads together in the laundry room,” he thought, as he struck off down the drive towards open country.

The room seemed covered with snow, so white, so full, shelves and cupboards loaded with linen. The two women there, near to one another, and silent. The predominant smell is that of soap. Miss Fetch is bent, counting, lifting and examining, and sometimes seems surprised as she lifts sheet after sheet, pillow case after pillow case, towel after towel. She recognises known marks, stitchings, embroidered initials, a particular sheet represented a particular day, a pillow case a certain bed, a towel a certain room. A map of days, of years. In the room itself there seems to stand a kind of bridge, and from time to time the women step upon it and walk towards each other, like strangers, and they say what is necessary.

“Everything has been kept in excellent order, Winifred.”

“I hope so,” as if it was not, and rejecting a compliment.

“We can do four rooms to-day, Winifred.”

“Yes.”

“These can go to Father's room.”

“Yes,” and “Yes,” and “Yes,” casually, as Miss Fetch wonders why, as Miss Fetch measures the nonsense of it.

“You removed everything from the big dining-room?”

“If you mean the coverings, I did.”

There is no warmth on the bridge.

“I want you to arrange with Twoomey to get the heating system going for this room, Winifred.”

“Very well.”

“Has Mr. Fury gone out?”

“I don't know, ma'm.”

“I expect you were very surprised when you got my letter. Are you glad to see me back again, Winifred?”

Miss Fetch suddenly smiled, and it stayed there, it played about the corners of her tight mouth.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing, ma'm. Just a thought. That's all.”

“A secret one, Winifred?” asked Sheila, and she returned the quite unexpected smile.

“I suppose so,” replied the housekeeper, as she thought to herself, “How odd. Am I glad to see her home? That's the first time in a whole life in this place that I was ever asked what I felt about anything.”

“Are you angry about something, Winifred?”

“I'm not angry with anybody,” she replied.

“We'll have that bundle of blankets down now, Winifred.”

“If you must.” There was the faintest note of protest in Miss Fetch's voice, and it shot Sheila to the cupboard, where she reached up and violently dragged out the bundle and let it fall to the floor.

“How changed she is,” she thought, “how old she looks, how crabbed. Poor Winifred. I loved her when I was a child, adored her. I can remember her sitting at the head of my bed, telling me such wonderful stories, and all of them out of her own head. A fresh young country girl then. How happy I was. How happy one
is
, so happy. And then little by little I got to know things, and my eyes opened, wider and wider.” Seeing Miss Fetch watching her she suddenly stared down at her hands, at the green blanket she held. How horrible it was knowing things, having to find out. She put down the blanket.

“Go and make some coffee, Winifred,” she said, and immediately Miss Fetch went out.

“How ashamed I became of Father, how sorry for Mother, how jealous of John. How lucky he was. Getting out. The luck's always on their side.”

Winifred came in with the coffee. “The gentleman's just come in,” she said. “Shall I go on with these, ma'm?”

“I'll finish it off myself, Winifred. I want you to go upstairs and strip two more bedrooms, and I want fires in them.”

“Very well.” Was that the ghost of a smile on Miss Fetch's face, or wasn't it?

“She thinks I'm a fool,” she thought.

She called after her, “And tell Mr. Fury I'm in here, Winifred,” but there was no reply, just the sound of the feet crossing the hall again.

He came in suddenly and found her seated on a pile of linen. He was wind-blown, his hair was ruffled, and his eyes were moist; his boots were thick with mud.

“Wipe your feet,” she said, and he said quickly, “Of course, sorry,” like teacher and pupil. He went outside and wiped his feet. He came back and sat down beside her.

“I wish you'd come, Sheila. You'd have enjoyed it.”

“You knew I couldn't,” she replied, and pointed to the chaos of the laundry.

“God! She really means it,” he thought.

“Nothing from him?” he asked.

She disliked his tone. “Him? Who's him?” she asked.

“Desmond, of course.”

“Why should there be?”

“I'm sorry,” he said, “I am being clumsy this morning.” He looked steadily at her, he longed to get behind that curious expression, to see, to find out. Something was the matter.

“Are you angry with me, Sheila?” he asked, and put an arm round her.

“No.”

“Could I have some coffee?”

She pointed to the tray. “And get me another cup whilst you're at it.”

“Where's Miss Fetch?”

“Busy upstairs. She seems to have a mood this morning. I expect it's because I made her bring us in early morning tea. She affected to be shocked, as though she hadn't brought tea in to other odd couples in this house. I wrote to Father this morning.”