An End and a Beginning (35 page)

“I'll just slip up and see,” Peter said, and left the room.

“A strange, shy man,” thought Miss Fetch. “The poor wretch. Not once since he came here has he looked me clean in the eye, and so rarely spoken, like there was mould on my boots and an east wind in my eye. I wonder how long this'll go on,” and she heard him pause for a moment on the stairs, and wondered why.

He reached the bedroom door and knocked. She heard him knocking, heard him call, but she gave no answer. She knew he was waiting there, she heard him knock again, then fumble with the doorknob. He pushed at it but it would not budge. He was astonished. He thought of it as a shutting out. He couldn't understand.

“Sheila!”

“Yes.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“No. Why?”

“Nothing. The breakfast's out long ago, and Miss Fetch is waiting.”

“I'll be down later,” she said. And she heard him walk away, and down the stairs, heard the door close and was glad.

“I shouldn't wait, Miss Fetch,” Peter said, and he shut the door after him and sat down to the table.

“Very well.”

“She'll be down later,” he said.

He looked at the hands that served him, the red, twisted hands. Something made him turn and look at her, something suddenly forced out the words.

“I'm sorry to hear you'll be going away, Miss Fetch,” he said.

She was leaning across the table, looking at him, and saying, “Are you?”

“I am. Though I expect you'll be glad to have your sister by you at last. How anybody could ever have lived alone in this graveyard is beyond me.”

She smiled, and it was the same smile, un-giving, puzzling.

“I didn't know you had a sister,” Peter said. She poured out his tea, she cut his bread and butter, and his eyes remained fixed on the hands.

“Didn't you?”

The replies were fences, but the words leap over.

“You know all about me, Miss Fetch,” he said, “everything.”

“Of course,” Miss Fetch said.

He was surprised when she sat down opposite him and put her hands on the table. They lay there like knots.

“When are you going, Mr. Fury?” she asked.

“To-morrow.”

He averted her glance, turned his head a little, as though he were already in search of the toy-like train to the coast, and the night boat that bobbed up and down at the deserted quay.

“To-morrow,” he thought. “Yes, to-morrow. Suddenly Miss Fetch looks at me and she asks me a question, and I've made up my mind. How strange that is. This going away for good and never coming back, and having known her, almost from when I was a youth, and she was a part of us all, and is no longer. Yes, I was young then, and always I was dreaming about marrying her. The times I dreamed Desmond dead and her all alone in the world. Now she's left him, and wants nothing, because she's had enough of
that. That
, he thought, hearing her say it again, hearing the word explode. I wonder what'll happen? Perhaps he'll follow her here, perhaps she'll marry again. Somehow I can't see her spending the rest of her life here.”

He pulled himself clear of his thoughts, and sat up. “What was that, Miss Fetch?”

“I said I was sorry to hear of your sad journey over here. Your sister-in-law was telling me about it yesterday. It must have been bitter indeed, God help you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“If there's anything else you want, Mr. Fury, just call out,” she said, and she opened the door and went out.

“She won't come down,” he told himself, “and I'll go out for a walk. My God! I never lay awake so long, I never watched so long for the light and was glad when it came. I was never so glad to get out of the room. That bloody man I hate was as close to her as I was, turned when I turned, looked when I looked, spoke when I spoke, I could feel it, I knew it, she's tormented by his absence, she can't stop thinking about him, she can't, she
can't
. I know. God I know. He'll turn up here and she'll crawl into his arms. I knew it the moment I woke up. She wasn't there, she was too far away, and I couldn't have reached her any more. It just happened like that. Changed in an instant, and I felt like the customer up the stairs. The way she smiled, the things she hid behind it, the way she looked at me, lying with her head flat back on that pillow, and told me I'd waked up in the night, shouting. A bad dream, she said. And the sound of her voice, even that seemed different, and her eyes tight shut as though she couldn't bear to open them again, and the quietness when she said, ‘Put out the light. It hurts my eyes.' It hurt mine, too, as I lay in the bloody darkness and wondered what had happened. All in an instant. Completely changed. Christ! I must be the biggest bloody fool unhung. The way it leapt out, the way she gave and gave, I thought she loved me, and I thought I had something to hang on to, and for the first time in my whole life I was close and I was warm, and then there she was miles away, cold as ice, almost indifferent. If she'd said it but once. Just said it. I love you.

“‘Sheila,' I said, I said it twice.

“‘What's wrong?' I said, ‘what's happened?'

“‘Nothing,' she said, without a move, without a sign, and I knew there
was
something.

“‘It's him, isn't it? It's Desmond?'

“‘Put out the light,' she said, and I put it out.

“It was then I knew, the very moment I put out the light. I wanted to shout out his name, I wanted to drag him out by the heels, and I wanted to talk him to shreds.

“‘
It is him,
' I said. Lying there like a log, and not a sound. I wanted to hammer it out.

“‘Isn't it?'

“‘Can't you understand?' she said, and I couldn't, and I didn't want to. I was flung right back against that wall, right back, and there was the dwarf with a bowler hat and an umbrella, asking me where I wanted to go, and handing me five whole shillings as though I ought to kneel down and thank him.

“‘I'm sorry I came,' I said. It was as if she wasn't even there, that I was talking to myself. ‘You were the only friend I ever had in my life, and all that time I was away I never once forgot it, and when I got that note I thought my heart would burst, I was so
glad
, so happy, I couldn't believe it, and I knew you'd never forgotten me, and I forgot the road that was empty and the house that was closed. It's
you
that doesn't understand.'

“She cried, and I let her cry, and I knew it was the end. ‘Listen,' she said, and I didn't listen, I couldn't, I didn't want to.

“‘Listen,' she said again, and that time I thought she moved, I thought she leaned towards me, but I couldn't see, couldn't feel. I felt as though the very darkness entangled me, like ropes on my arms, my legs, I just couldn't move, and I couldn't answer. And suddenly there was this man in front of me, every inch of him, and I hated him and I remembered him, and then I was talking, then I was stripping him, then I was reminding her.

“‘Can
you
remember an evening in Price Street, a particular evening that I can remember, because it was snowing, and the whole city was covered in a blanket, and I came over and knocked and there was no answer, and I opened the door and walked in and you were there, and he was, and your head was fast to that wall, and his elephant hand was wide spread right across your face, and he pressed and pressed, until I thought he'd push you right through the wall. And can you remember the fingers in your hair, and pulling at it, and can you remember the hand coming slowly down your face to your neck, and pressing there, and can you hear him talking to you, and shouting, and can you remember his face that was so close to yours? Can you hear him now, as you lie there thinking about him, feeling him, crying about him? I can. I was so frozen with horror that I couldn't move. You remember, don't you? I do, because only the night before I'd arrived home from the college in Ireland, and there he was accusing you, of something between you and a man named Dwyer. And why? Because he had smiled at you, and you'd smiled back at him. Think of it. A smile was only a smile until he saw the one Dwyer gave you.

“‘“Christ damn you! You were. I saw you,”' he said, and you said, “‘I can't help being smiled at,”' and then he struck you across the face, and still I couldn't move, and I was even afraid of him myself, and he shouted right in your face. “‘I tell you I saw you both.
Both,
”' screaming it, completely crazy, out of his mind with jealousy, with hatred of any man that ever came near you. Can you remember the words? I can. I can even see his lips so tight against your own as though the swine would make you eat the words out of his own big slobbering mouth.

“‘“Every hair of your head,”' he said, “‘every single hair, even the skin of the soles of your feet,”' he said, “‘they're mine, you're mine, and I'll kill any man that comes between us.'” You remember Sheila. The one you loved and the one you laughed at. The one of whom you were afraid, the one who was shy, the one who was clumsy, the one who's travelled far to-day by virtue of all those wooden heads that helped him along the road. The one you told me about. The one who did all the talking, and the ringing of the bells, and helped straighten the back of many a wretch before he learned how to knock him down again. The one in London to-day, and who's out for what he can get, and the one who turned dock labour into an army and grovelled when they made him a Captain, the one you knelt down to and whose boots you polished. Remember him? Remember his name? Think of it. My own brother. He was going to turn the whole bloody world into a trade union, and was only angry with God Almighty because he couldn't give
Him
a union card too. With his brotherly love and his damned comradeship that folded its arms the moment he reached his own front door. And think of the times you begged him to go and see my mother, do you remember? And the number of letters he wrote to me when I was away, hundreds and thousands that came every day and blocked up the gaol gates. Can you remember it all? And that house, that wall, you were still stiff against it, you were crying, and slowly he pressed you down, right down, his big hands on your shoulders, pressing and pressing and when you were on your knees he said, “Say you're sorry”. Remember that? I do. I have never forgotten. I hated him then, I hate him now. And there you lie, crying about him. God I know. I realized it this very moment, the moment I woke up. And that was only
one
night. There were others. The ones I didn't see, the ones that mother never learned about. Multiply them, multiply them, and you reach the length of your own life. He didn't even want the child. You know he didn't. He wants nothing but power, and more power, and that's all. He's travelled far indeed from his father's house. I think about it, too, as I thought about it when I had to force my feet to take me to that miserable and empty place, and asked myself as I knelt why I felt so bitter and so sad. I'd have given my heart to have been able to hold a single finger, a single strand of her hair, to have heard just one simple word from my mother's mouth, and beside her that silent, uncomplaining man with a hundred lifetimes locked up inside him. I could cry too, just like you, just like you.' She reached out for my hand. I felt it come, she took my own, and I pulled it away, there was nothing in my hand, nothing left, it was quite empty.
I
was empty. Her hand came out again, I felt it, clutching, but it was no use. I knew it wasn't. It was too late. If she'd thrown herself on me, if she'd smothered me, if she'd clawed and clung, I couldn't have spoken, I couldn't have looked, and I could never have felt. Something went right out of me. It was finished. The room filled with that man,
filled
with him, and I hated him. I could feel him there, between us, see him, smell him, and God Almighty there she was, crying about him.
Crying
.

“I felt for words, I dug for them. I hated the darkness, I hated lying there, I hated waiting for nothing. ‘I can't help myself,' she said.

“‘Neither can I.'

“The things I wanted to say, the things I didn't. ‘Where is he now? Can you feel him, his arms wrapped round you, right round? Is he feeling for the child? Are you? Are you crawling again, for what you want, for what he doesn't? Are you kissing his boots again? Are you opening up and spreading out and bedding down?
Now
. In this stifling, bloody bed? Is he talking in your ear? Is the length of your legs the length of his exciting life? Is he telling you what you were and what you are? Is he giving you orders again? Is he telling you to walk past a house and a window and not look in? Are you walking miles and miles, are you standing in the rain again, at the street corner, at the back of the shed, on the waste ground, are you listening to him shouting, are you watching him harangue the mugs, are you wishing those wide spreading arms were all for you? Are you? Or are you thinking of your castle in the dead land? I wonder what the hell you're thinking about.”

“And I did, yes, in that horrible moment when I saw everything break up, I would have liked to have dug the words out of her shut mouth and her closed eyes, and her strange, unbelievable attitude as she lay on the very edge of that bed, a million miles away from me. I would have liked to have plastered them on the wall and read them. They were his arms and not mine, and I never even knew. I'm too thick, too bloody ignorant to know. His mouth, his lips,
his
hands, right down and right in, as she gives, as she grovels, as she begs.

“‘Peter,' she said, so quietly, so suddenly, and I seemed to watch my own name go round in a circle and come back to me, strike me.

“‘Well?' One word. That was all. I couldn't reach further than that.

“‘Listen, dear.'

“
‘Dear.
' I thought, ‘dear', and it dragged up the other words after it.