The Furys (40 page)

‘Will he come in?'

Mr Fury said, ‘Of course. Of course he'll come in,' and made towards the door.

‘I shall be down in a few minutes,' Mrs Fury said. ‘I have to attend to Father.'

‘Yes, yes.' Mr Fury was hurrying down the stairs. This was a surprise. He opened the front door.

‘Hello, Mike!' he called out boisterously. ‘Glad to see you. Come in. Thought you'd sailed long ago.'

Mr Mulcare smiled, and followed Mr Fury into the kitchen. ‘Sit down here.'

Mr Fury cleared the sofa of hats and coats and newspapers.

‘Well, well! I'm glad you came,' he said. ‘Where's your boat?'

‘She's across at Manchester,' replied Mulcare. ‘She came down there with a scab crew, and is loading now.'

‘Oh aye.' Mr Fury sat down. ‘The wife will be down in a tick. So she's really going, then?'

‘Yes,' Mr Mulcare said. He made himself comfortable on the sofa. He was wearing a light grey suit, white collar and blue tie, and soft peaked cap of a material similar to the suit. He wore black block-toed shoes and grey socks. Mr Fury was lost in admiration. What a fine, well-set-up young man he looked! Suddenly Peter came into his mind. Peter wearing a light grey suit and soft cap. ‘Why,' he thought, ‘that lad of mine dressed up like this – he'd knock socks off Mulcare.' He already visualized Peter sitting alongside Mr Mulcare.

‘You're looking grand. Oh, here's the wife.' Mrs Fury had come into the kitchen. Mulcare at once rose to his feet, and said, ‘Good evening, Mrs Fury.' The woman made a step forward, then stopped and subjected Mulcare to a scrutinizing glance. Her head was bent forward. She seemed to survey his person from beneath her eyelids. ‘How are you?' She shook hands with the young man and sat down by the table.

‘Are you the young man Mr Fury was telling me about?' Again her eyes fastened upon his person. They rested first upon his grey silk socks, then slowly climbed until they came to rest upon his face.

‘A fine, strong, healthy young fellow,' she thought. So this was the young man who would get Peter away. This was the Mr Mulcare who had left his father in Ireland. Whilst her husband talked and the young man listened, Mrs Fury set to studying him. Rather well dressed. A sailor? What kind of a sailor?

Mr Fury looked across at his wife. ‘Would you make a drink of tea, Fanny?' he asked.

‘Yes, of course.' She got up and went outside. Mr Mulcare seemed to follow the woman with his eyes. He half turned his head and looked at the alarm-clock.

‘Would you like a drink, Fury?'

‘Not now. Not now. I hope you'll wait. I was sorry I missed you last time. The lad will be in soon. He started work today. Some sort of errand-boy's job. I don't know what it is exactly.'

‘Does his mother want him to go to sea?' asked Mr Mulcare.

‘Oh yes, I think so. If you could get him a job, certainly. He's at a very impressionable age, really,' continued Mr Fury. ‘He ought to go away. Pull him out a bit. But mind you, I don't want him to go below.'

‘No, of course not,' replied Mulcare, laughing. ‘On the bridge, eh?'

Mr Fury said, ‘Anywhere excepting down below. I had thirty years of it.'

‘So one can see,' replied the young man.

‘Why, here he is now,' said Mr Fury, jumping up as he heard the back door latch lifted. Peter came into the kitchen.

2

He was wearing a dungaree suit of his father's. His face and hands were dirty, on his head he wore a light tweed cap, pulled hard down over one eye. When he removed it, his hair, imprisoned all day, and quite unused to head-covering, shot up in obvious rebellion.

‘Go and clean yourself up,' cried his mother. ‘You're a sight.'

‘Half a minute,' said Mr Fury. He turned to his son and caught his arm.

‘This is Mr Mulcare. Remember me telling you about him?' At which announcement Mr Mulcare rose from the sofa and shook hands with Peter.

‘Pleased to see you,' he said.

Peter stood head and shoulders over the man. They seemed to take stock of each other. There was something about the grip of the man's hand that established a confidence at once.

‘Well! You're a fine big lad,' said Mr Mulcare. He turned to Mr Fury, ‘Isn't he now?'

Mr Fury laughed. Peter was beaming at the compliment.

‘Yes,' Mr Fury said. Mr Mulcare sat down again.

‘Take your coat off, man,' said Mr Fury. ‘Fanny's making some tea.'

‘I can't stay, Fury,' replied the man. ‘I only called here on chance. I am on my way down to meet a friend.'

‘Oh!' It was obvious that Mr Fury was keenly disappointed. He had spoken to Fanny so often of Mr Mulcare, praising his qualities, his abilities, and now he wasn't even going to stay. Peter had gone out to wash himself.

‘I am sorry you're not going to stay, Mike,' said Mr Fury.

‘I only wanted to have a look at your boy, Fury,' replied Mr Mulcare.

At that moment Mr Mulcare's eyes alighted upon a spider climbing the wainscoting. He lay back and followed its erratic course. Now it stopped. Mr Fury kept looking at Mr Mulcare with rapt attention. The spider proceeded up the green-painted wood, and the young man's eyes followed. Suddenly it disappeared. The man's eyes seemed glued to the spot. He was lost in thought. Still studying Mr Mulcare, Mr Fury's ears attuned themselves to the running commentary in the back kitchen. Mrs Fury was busy at the stove. Peter was drying himself with the roller towel.

‘But I don't understand,' Mrs Fury was saying. ‘You've finished there?'

‘Don't you see?' Peter replied. ‘The job's a scab one, and it is no use going down again. Mr Sweeney told me. I went out for a load to the North Market today, and never got back with it. Half-way home a crowd of nearly two hundred people upturned the whole cart-load of potatoes. I was lucky to get horse and lorry back to the stable.'

‘Oh!' said Mrs Fury. She had been thinking of something else, the scene at Maureen's house. She said brusquely, ‘Better get your tea.' The clatter of the cups aroused Mr Mulcare from his reverie, and he sat up suddenly on the sofa. Mr Fury had not spoken a word. Peter sat at the top of the table near the door. Mr Fury and the visitor sat on the sofa, against which the table had been pushed. Mrs Fury sat opposite them. She now poured out the tea.

‘What a fine-looking woman!' Mr Mulcare was saying to himself as he watched her fill the cups. There was something fascinating in watching her. He looked from the mother to the son. This dual admiration in watching her left Mr Dennis Fury derelict. He wasn't even on the map. As the woman handed Mulcare the tea, she subjected him to a penetrating stare, as she remarked in a casual way, ‘Sorry you have to go.'

Mr Mulcare smiled. He looked up at Peter.

‘So this young chap wants to go to sea?'

‘That's it,' remarked Mr Fury, now on the map again. ‘That's it. Can you get him a job? He wants to go. Don't you, Peter?'

For a moment the boy did not reply. He was looking at his mother.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes, I want to go.' There was something venomous in the woman's glance. So that was it. He did want to go. This was the end, the very end of her idea. She could hear her daughter now. She seemed to pass out of the kitchen into number thirty-five Price Street. ‘You've sacrificed everything for an idea. You have made your own life like a prison.' When she looked at her son again, he was smiling. She would have liked to strike him. ‘Yes, he wants to go.'

‘Well, then,' said Mr Fury, ‘that's settled.'

‘On the other hand,' said the visitor, ‘he can only lie low until this strike clears up.'

‘What do you think of this business, Mr Mulcare?' asked Mrs Fury, as she began to gather the cups together on the tray.

‘I think it is a nuisance,' he said, and moved forward on the sofa.

‘I quite agree with you. It's a disgrace. Nobody gains anything by it.' She pulled out the table to let him get free. Mr Fury also got up. Peter remained seated. If that strong grip of Mr Mulcare's hand had created a confidence in him, it was wavering now. There was something about the man Peter did not like. His calm self-assurance, the way he looked at people as though from some lofty height, and his smile that seemed forced. There was something cold, dispassionate, about him. Who was the man? How did his father know him?

‘I must go,' said Mr Mulcare. ‘Excuse me.' Mrs Fury moved aside to let him pass. With four in the kitchen, space was cramped.

‘I am going down your way,' said Mr Fury. The woman had not expected this.

‘Going to see Possie next door,' he added quickly, seeing surprise in his wife's quick glance.

‘Can I go?' asked Peter. He got up from the table.

The woman did not reply immediately. Had this been arranged? It certainly looked as though it had. ‘I don't know. It rests with your father.' Then she said hurriedly, ‘Oh yes, go if you wish.' She wanted to be alone. She wanted to be quiet, to think, and also she wanted to study Mr Mulcare. She had pinned the man down in a corner of her mind. And when they had gone – when they had left her alone – she would indulge herself. She would place Mr Mulcare in a corner and look at him.

Peter was already dressed. Mr Mulcare stood, hat in hand, waiting. Mr Fury came in from the lobby.

‘I'm going your way,' said Mr Fury. Mrs Fury stood underneath the mantelshelf. Surely this manoeuvre had been planned. They wanted to talk. But not in the house. And then Peter's asking to join them. Surely it had been arranged.

‘Well, hope to see you again soon,' remarked the visitor. He shook hands with Mrs Fury. ‘I like your boy.' Then turned towards the door.

All three passed out into the street. Mrs Fury called, ‘Denny.' The man came back.

‘Don't go sitting in pubs with that boy.'

‘No, I'm going straight to Manton Hospital.'

‘All right.' She followed his figure until he caught up with Peter and Mulcare, now carrying on an animated conversation. She shut the door and sat down.

There was something disarming about the sudden silence of the house. She took out her work-basket and placed it on the sofa beside her. She took out one of Mr Fury's shirts and began to sew.

‘I never saw such a man before,' she was telling herself. It wasn't his manner or his person, or indeed his dress. It was just his hurry to be off. One might have thought that the kitchen of number three Hatfields had had a suffocating effect upon him. The something disarming about the silence was the fact that one's thoughts came trooping out. They confronted one. Silence endowed them with a life of their own. They became living beings. They stood in rows, pointing and gesticulating. They accused, reminded, goaded, warned. It was inevitable that she should take down that work-basket and begin to sew. The act of sewing, the steady movement of the hand, the even rhythm of the needle as it passed to and fro, in and out, acted as a kind of gentle drug. It spun a web about these thoughts and imprisoned them. But as the silence grew, broken only by the steady breathing of the woman and the periodic click of needle against thimble, the figure of Mulcare emerged and stood before her. As she raised her eyes, the figure moved towards Mr Mangan's chair and sat in it. Suddenly Mrs Fury turned her head and looked away towards the window. At the same time she drew back in her chair. It was as if she herself had risen and pushed him into that chair: as if she had said, ‘In one moment I shall attend to you,' and then had pushed him beyond actuality itself. The web she had spun about her thoughts began to give way. Maureen confronted her and spoke a woman's name. Ragner, the name was. Anna Ragner. Mr Michael Mulcare had sunk into oblivion. As she pictured him in her mind, an inner voice seemed to say, ‘There are other things to attend to.'

Maureen seemed to whisper through the wall, ‘You have sacrificed everything for your idea.' As she said this, Peter came running in. The figure of Mulcare rose in the chair, stretched out a hand, and clasped it over her son's mouth. Then Maureen laughed. Silence again. Mrs Fury shuddered in the chair.

‘What on earth am I thinking about?' she exclaimed. She picked up her sewing again.

‘You are thinking about the college authorities.'

‘And my knock. A most peculiar knock,' said the landlord.

‘And my scratching,' commented the butcher.

‘And that matter of the loan.' Mrs Ragner's thick lips parted in a smile.

Mrs Fury's head began to nod. She let fall the shirt she had been sewing. There rose a sound, a kind of warning gong – it sounded in her own mind. It seemed to rise from some unfathomable depth of her being, after she had sat alone in that kitchen, and the sound seemed to ring in her ears. It was as though the bricks and mortar of number three Hatfields had become humanized. The house had a tale to tell. She was alone at last. The walls, the kitchen, the rooms, the grate, each endowed with a voice of its own, began to tell the woman their tales. Endeavours, hopes, promises broken and fulfilled, lies, cheating. Limned in those very walls was the story of her own life. Mrs Fury had fallen asleep.

When she awoke it was already dark. How could she have fallen asleep like that? She looked at the shirt upon the floor, the scattered contents of the basket. The fire had burnt low. She was shivering. She got up, and having flung some coal upon the fire, put up the tin blower. Opening the window for draught, she then crossed to the lobby and stood listening at the foot of the stairs. Anthony Mangan was snoring. He hadn't been too well today. She went upstairs to look at him. Lighting a candle, she held it high over the old man's head. ‘Poor Dad,' she thought, as she went into her own room. She put down the candle on the dressing-table, and from a drawer took out a long official-looking letter. She sat down on the bed and began to go through the papers. The fees must be paid. Must be paid. She would never rest. Then as she flung the papers from her as though they burned her fingers, as though they harboured some foul poison, the whole scene with her daughter rose crystal-clear in her mind. Yes, she was determined to do it. Yes. Even if she starved. There was no doubt of that. She would see this through to the end. She,
she
had taken Denny's money.