An End and a Beginning (38 page)

“‘Free,' you said. ‘Free.' It astonished you, as though it was a great surprise.

“‘When I was a child I experienced nothing like that,' I said. They
are
free. They're so sturdy, so independent. In that miserable little park of five stunted trees and grass that was less than green. Can you see them now? I can. Can you hear them? I always remembered that, Desmond. It made me realize that afternoon how far I had come, it made me think of my own childhood, and of how, before I could play with
any
child it was carefully examined. I remember you laughing then. ‘Examined it,' you said.

“‘They had to be careful,' I said.

“‘Who?'

“‘My parents.'

“‘Careful of what?' you said, and then I realized how far I was from your world, and you from mine. ‘Careful of me, of course,' I said.

“‘Good Lord!' you exclaimed. ‘I never heard the like of that.' You hadn't, indeed. I was still pressing your hand, but perhaps you hadn't felt it at all. I was only pressing my happiness into you. Can you even see the park, the sun on that grass, remember the day? We sat there for a long time, still holding hands. We
were
happy then. I remember telling myself how those children lit up everything they touched with hands, everything they looked at, that they were happy without thinking about it. You can't ever borrow that, you can't steal it. You can only watch it and be delighted by it. I was. In those days you were quite yourself. That's how I liked you. Just being yourself. We got up and walked slowly home. And all the way back I dreamed of the child, I talked of the child. I wanted it. Remember? We sat by the fire in that queer little house, that queer little kitchen. I remember I kissed for the child, held you for it, hugged tight for it. ‘Not yet,' you said.

“Remember? I wonder if you can? How patient I was then, how believing, how trusting in you. I never gave up hoping. My whole nature cried out for it, I just wanted it, but I had to wait for it. I don't know what you were afraid of, the child, or of me. It seemed strange to me, coming from you that always boasted he was afraid of nothing. ‘Not now,' you said, ‘perhaps later on.' So I waited, trusting, gullible. I didn't even understand then. I wasn't aware of your plans. ‘Not now.'”

She could hear him saying it, in this darkened room. The words crawled to her under the sheets. “It was always later on, wasn't it? And then it was too late.”

Suddenly she flung away the sheet, and shouted into the empty room. “Well? Isn't it? Can't you admit it, say it? Isn't it too late.
Now?
Are you satisfied? Has everybody been
saved
?
Is it my turn yet? Have you got where you wanted to get, travelling on the backs of your friends? Could I have the child now? The one I wanted before it was too late? Or shall I just go back and go on being your whore?”

And he is still there, still very close, and she can see him, feel him, watch him, see him standing there, pathetic, bewildered, after he is back, after the letter is picked up, after he has read it. She has watched him get on the train, get off it, hurry for the taxi that will carry him back quickly to Ralston Park. “Well? Can't you say
anything?
”

Quite unconsciously her finger had pressed on the switch. She sat up and stared about her. She saw the disordered bed, the garment-strewn floor. She remembered the one who had gone out, angry, hurt, imagined him stamping about somewhere in the darkened country. She listened for the closing of a door; she wondered if he would come up to her. She cried her bitterness into empty hands.

“How shocked he was that time. He couldn't really believe that I'd use such a word. Right out of
my
mouth. But what was the word I should have used if the child wouldn't come, just because he held it back? ‘Whore,' I said, ‘whore.'”

By a closing of her eyes she is back in that life, the different life. “All the time I was living, I was learning, and I never stopped being fascinated. Sometimes I'd sit alone in that house and try to look back at my own home, so far away, and so safe behind its barriers of verdant green. Sometimes I felt I was looking at it as out of some fever, some fester. I imagined I was enveloped in hands, clouds of hands that shot upwards to pull nothing down, that could pull nothing up. A strange, endless restlessness. I used to talk about it. He just smiled. He always did, I suppose I seemed naïve. ‘Too many hands,' he said, ‘that's the trouble. The feet are far more important. Being upright's the thing. If you slip and fall down you might never get up again. Somebody will forget you're there, and after a while you might never have been there at all, upright or prone.'

“I was always the listener, beside the fire, sitting at the table, looking out of a window, sewing a garment, polishing or scrubbing. Sometimes I thought of my father. He never forgave me, and wrote only the once. A virtual dismissal, I had broken the law. Poor father. I can't somehow think of him old, bent, rheumatic, watery-eyed perhaps, doddering about in some London hotel. Very odd. Mother I grieve about. She always wrote, never failed. I used to look forward to her letters, they did something to the strangeness about me, though some of them I thought very silly. But I loved her for remembering me. Her letters saddened me, they were so full of condolence, concern. How unhappy I must be in a strange city, so
far
away from home. Yes, she had heard something about Gelton. Wasn't that the city that was so full of Irish peasants? It was indeed. I always replied to her. I'm sorry now that I never went over to her when she was so ill, and that was only because Desmond was more to me than anyone on earth. I was so greedy for my own life, for my own happiness. How odd it is to think that in a lifetime Mother never once put her foot out of the county. She was always sad, disappointed, but that was Father. Ten wives would never have satisfied him, and she would always be the least. Poor, harmless, obedient mother.”

Miss Fetch knocked, and Miss Fetch was not answered.

“The times I was happiest were the evenings when I waited for Desmond to come home. I was always rushing to the door, welcoming him, being glad, thankful, that's how it was in Gelton, when sometimes the man went out in the morning, and did not return in the evening. Each day had its danger, its worry, its waiting. And this life is still new, still different. Each day is the same day, all nights are one night. A pattern of life is unalterable, indestructible. One never asks a person if he is happy. You ask if the length of their loaf equals the length of their day. Each house is the same house, each person behind walls the same person. I was close to them, I was learning to know them, to grow up with them. Desmond always imagined that I disliked these people, that I was afraid of them. He thought I would be disgusted by what I saw, shamed by it, and how he dreaded my going out amongst them. I did see them, walk with them, share with them. I saw them in their little houses, their tiny rooms. One after another I met them. These strangers who were not strangers, these simple people. Never in my life had I seen so much love and devotion, so much struggle, and faith, and kindness. I wanted to be happy like they were, like I had never been. And that was being with Desmond, that was walking with them. I loved him as he was, hard-working, courageous, kind, helpful, even understanding. Always untiring, always considerate. But that was the beginning. He was so proud of me, so jealous of me, and so terribly afraid I might run away from him. It became a complete obsession with him. He always thought I would go back to my home, back to the prison. I never did, I stayed with him. Yes, how much he loved me in the beginning, how much he wanted me, how much I wanted him. And how long I went on hoping for another to grow up beside me. I hoped just as the others did, I was often jealous of them, I watched their happiness, their full hands. How proud I was of him. And that was the first years, and I was far from my home. I had completely forgotten it, I might never have been there. I was close in on this other life.”

But another world was already knocking at her door. “Yes, Winifred?”

“I've the breakfast out,” Miss Fetch said. “I called you twice, but I think you must have been fast asleep. I left early tea outside, and knocked, and it was still there when I came up an hour ago.”

“Has the post come?”

“Long since.”

“What is the time?”

“It's after ten o'clock.”

“Is Mr. Fury back yet?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he? In his room?”

“Having his breakfast. I hope it's all right, ma'm, but I just told him to get on with it. You said you wished to clear out that study to-day, and I put him in the dining-room.”

At this moment Miss Fetch realized that she had better not go on talking through the door, and, opening it, she went in. She was astonished to see the darkened room, the undrawn curtains. She was close to the bed, but the woman in it appeared like a shadow. And when she spoke her voice seemed different.

“I thought he looked not quite himself,” she thought, “perhaps they've had words.” But it was none of her business.

“Shall I draw the curtains, ma'm?”

“Leave them.”

“Very well.”

“Am I to bring something up, or would you rather come down?”

“I'll be down later, Winifred,” Sheila said.

“I can't understand it at all,” thought Miss Fetch. “Lying here with the morning right in on us, and her there, and the curtains not even drawn.”

“Tell Mr. Fury to get on with his breakfast. I shan't be very long. I've rather a headache.”

“Would you like me to get you a pill?”

“No, thank you.”

“Very well.”

It seemed an age before the houskeeper reached the door. “And close the door after you,” Sheila called after her, as though Miss Fetch might not.

“That is what I am doing, ma'm,” replied the housekeeper, banging it shut. The noise echoed in the house. “He never came up, I thought he would,” and she saw Peter seated alone at his breakfast.

“How silent the room is, the house, the whole country might have fallen asleep. It seems so far away from the other. I think one of the strangest things in Gelton was hearing those clocks for the very first time. Hundreds, thousands of clocks, all singing the same tune, at the same time. And the feet thundering away in the morning, and thundering home in the evening. I suppose I shall always remember the feet, as I remember the first time I saw those hundreds of running men. Desmond knew all about that. I wasn't even on the inside. It was much too early. I just watched it with astonishment.

“D'you remember that morning, when we came off the ship? I expect you've forgotten that, too. You've been so busy getting on. Getting somewhere.”

He hadn't answered, yet he still seemed to be there, watching her, still waiting for an answer.

“You got back from London then?”

Yes, he had got back.

“You've done what you wanted to?”

Yes, he had done what he wanted to.

“You found the note? You read it?”

He had read the note.

“I know you have. I was standing behind you when you read it. I watched you, saw you crush up the letter into a tiny ball, I watched you slump in the chair. You just couldn't believe it, could you? You got up then and began walking about the room. I could see how furious you were, waving the letter about. I heard everything you said about me. You didn't believe it could end. Could you believe me?
Could
you? Can't you hear?”

Yes, he could hear.

“Didn't it make you remember how happy we used to be?” She switched on the light. There was nothing there. The clock is looked at, but the time doesn't seem to matter, besides its hands have ceased to move.

“I ought to get up,” she thought, not moving, not wanting to, hiding again, thinking of their happiness, as she clutched at her misery.

“I ought to get up. Yes, I must go down.” But the room seems yet full of the presence of another, and she cannot move.

“Can
you
remember nothing, whilst I remember everything. Yes,” she thought, “I can remember all right. Each day and each week; each morning and evening, and each hour. What a time ago it seems now since we met on that shore on a summer afternoon and the world was changed for us both, all in a moment everything was different. I joined my life to his and entered another world. I wonder if he can remember the early struggles, especially my own, to understand, groping my way about as through a jungle. I wonder if he remembers my getting used to it all, my beginning to learn, learning. How I did my very best, how I helped him, bent and struck and humbled myself for him. And those happy evenings when he came home from the yards. The hours by the fire, the things we said, the dreams we had, the things we
wished
. The meetings we went to, the friends we made.

“Can you remember first being made a delegate, to the great delight of your friends? I expect you can. And can you remember the wonderful things you were going to do for what you called your wretches? I can. I can remember the first time you organized a strike and I could mention the distance you travelled before you learned how to look another away, and how to break one. That was the time your head began to swell with your own importance, when before that disaster it was always bursting and rocking with the rights of others. Have you forgotten? I expect you have, you got lost in the clouds that were full of words like getting on, and getting out. I
was
surprised. So, too, were your friends, and not least your wretches. Your head was stuffed with your plans for Desmond Fury, mine contained only the single thought of a beginning of something else. I began to think of my days that were wasting? And I was still in love with you even then, and I was still hoping for the child. Yes, I actually began to think of my rights. Remember what I said. It surprised you, didn't it. If only you'd understood, tried to understand. I would have been so happy. I didn't want to get on or go anywhere, I just wanted us to be happy, and share it with another. If only you'd done that. I shouldn't be lying in this bed, in this house that I never really wanted to return to, because I knew it was something that finished long ago. But no. You wanted to get on and get out. Well, you have, haven't you?