The Secret Journey (17 page)

Maureen Kilkey said nothing. In fact, she had not uttered a word all the way down the stairs. This silence worried him—he wanted to be off.

‘Well, good-bye now,' he said, and made to go, but Maureen did not move. If he could have seen her face in the clear light of day he would have noticed how clearly it mirrored the ferment within.

‘Don't stand here like this,' he said.

Somehow, he wanted to see her off that building. He couldn't rest until he had seen her actually go, and in a moment he was talking again. It was simply impossible to stand there looking at her, feeling her very presence, knowing that any moment she might burst into another flood of tears, and he didn't want that, certainly not on the main floor of Royalty House.

People were passing in and out of the building, throwing furtive glances, dark with meaning, at the man and the woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. He couldn't push her out into the street, and shout ‘Run away. Run away. What right have you to be interfering with me?' He couldn't do anything. Her silence paralysed him.

‘Maureen,' he said, ‘if I gave you all the money you wanted, who would it help? You? Not at all! It would help this bloody moneylender. But what would happen to you? You would have lost your best quality—your courage. Surely you must remember your days in that jute factory, how we lived at home—surely. Have you lost it? You used to be so fine, and now you're getting like the rest, whining. Surely marriage hasn't robbed you of your fine spirit.' He began gently pushing her towards the door. ‘Come along,' he said vexatiously, ‘I can't stand here all day.'

‘Don't push me,' she shot back at him, and consolidated her position against the stairs. ‘Who are you to talk? A fat lot of courage you have yourself. You know what suits your book. Who are you to talk about principle, that hasn't a single spark of it? Honest working men's money! Aren't you climbing up on their pennies? Are you interested in their lives? H'm! D'you want me to yell out?'

‘I don't want you to do anything of the sort, except to go away and leave me alone. Please go! What right have you to interfere with my business? I'll never let anybody do that.'

‘Not even your wife?'

‘Not even her,' said Desmond. ‘Anyway, please keep her out of it. Sheila has nothing to do with us. Now please go. I've told you I haven't any money.'

‘You don't always seem very adept at minding your own business. Sometimes other people mind it for you. I admire your style, I must say. You may have one sort of face here, but quite another at home. If you weren't so damned ignorant, you'd understand what I mean. However, I'll go, but you will always be able to remember that we stood here together, that I asked you to help me and you refused. You could have helped if you'd wanted, but you're mean as sin.' She stood on her tiptoes, and leaning against him exclaimed savagely, ‘You think you cut a damned fine figure with your airy opinions about people and the state of the world. But they aren't as interested in you as you think. Anybody could see through you. They'll never tell you what they do see, either. People aren't all as indifferent as you. They pity you, having realized what you really are. A bloody scrounger—a damned impostor, setting yourself up as a champion of working men. You'll pay for it, believe me. You think you're clever, but you're not. Mother's half crazy—but she saw through you all right. No wonder you have to guard yourself. You're like a glass figure. One can see all the works moving inside. Don't feel sorry for me, for Christ's sake. I can look after myself all right.'

‘So it was Mother who sent you here!'

‘Damn you! Can't you say anything else but that?' She pushed past him and in a flash she had disappeared.

Desmond Fury walked out into the street. ‘Phew!' he exclaimed. ‘Phew!'

Maureen Fury arrived home hot, tired, breathless. She was consumed by rage. She couldn't think. She was hedged in, not by the world, but by two figures. Joseph Kilkey came in. He found her leaning by the fireplace, her hands resting on the slab of the grate.

‘Where's the child, Maureen?' he asked, casting an anxious glance round the kitchen.

‘He's next door,' she replied, without turning round. ‘I've been out. I'd better get him, I suppose.'

Joseph Kilkey laughed. ‘Of course,' he said. ‘Of course, you'll get him right away.'

He watched her go out, then sat down in the chair and began unlacing his boots. Being what he was wont to term his night off, he did not put his slippers on, but went upstairs and brought down his Sunday boots and suit, a clean shirt and collar. Then he went out to the back to wash. He was almost complete for the street when his wife returned with the child. Without any hesitation she placed the child in the cradle and remarked, ‘If he cries, just use your foot. I've been out and kept longer than I expected.'

‘Isn't the tea ready, then?' asked Mr. Kilkey, hardly able to conceal his disappointment, especially as on this particular night of the week he liked to be away early. He went to Confession and then strolled down to the billiard hall, of which he was caretaker, but this job had been threatened ever since Dermod had arrived, for the changed circumstances kept Joseph Kilkey much more at home. It became an especial pleasure, therefore, when he was able to go off and have a game of snooker with his old friends in the Young Men's Society. He was getting fairly used to his wife's habits. Mr. Kilkey still felt, however, that only one thing was required for complete happiness—Maureen must sooner or later settle down. As he rocked the cradle with his foot one thought after another came popping into his head. Sometimes he said to himself that Maureen seemed hardly to realize her position as a wife. In fact, he doubted if she knew she was actually married. He looked at her now as she flitted about the place, flushed, excited, banging one thing after another on to the table. The kettle began to sing. Mr. Kilkey, having rocked the child to sleep, sat down, first spreading a clean white handkerchief on the chair for fear of getting grease-marks on his light-brown suit, a favourite colour of his, and one which no persuasion of Mrs. Kilkey would make him alter.

‘All set,' he ventured to say, watching Maureen's face with evident curiosity. They sat down. If there was anything Maureen hated it was the sight of her husband dressed up in his Sunday clothes. It seemed to throw up more sharply his ugliness, for now that large bald head shone like a billiard ball, and the brilliantine had nicely trimmed his moustaches, to the detriment of his loose and heavy mouth, which usually was half-hidden behind the drooping whiskers. Mr. Joseph Kilkey's efforts to make himself presentable were a torture to Maureen. In his workaday clothes he didn't look so bad; what stood out all too clearly now was generally hidden behind the big grey peaked cap and the usual accumulation of dirt. Mrs. Kilkey couldn't look straight at all on such occasions, but when Joe smiled it made it even worse. Had she actually tied herself up to this monstrosity?

‘Maureen,' remarked Mr. Kilkey after he had said his grace, a practice Maureen had never shared in, ‘you seemed in an awful flurry when you came in. Where were you this afternoon?'

‘Out, of course. Where d'you think?'

Joe smiled, then filled his mouth with bread. ‘I don't know,' he replied thickly, still with his mouth full. ‘I asked you where.'

‘On business.'

‘Oh! I see.' Joseph Kilkey had no more to say. Business might mean anything. He was feeling a little vexed that he was now nearly half an hour late. ‘You know that if one doesn't get heard at the chapel before seven, one has to wait till well after ten o'clock, and I've a match on to-night.'

Mrs. Kilkey said, ‘Oh yes! How splendid! Who are you playing?'

‘Don't,' said Mr. Kilkey, ‘don't. You're not the slightest bit interested, and you know it.'

He only half finished his tea and got up to go.

‘There's something I want to say,' announced Maureen. She brushed back her rebellious hair, so that now her face looked larger.

‘Don't do that,' Mr. Kilkey ventured to say. ‘It makes you look quite common when you wear your hair like that. Well, get it off your chest, old girl. I'm going.' He looked for his hat.

‘Yes, all right. I'm not going to keep you. I want to know what you intend to do about Mrs. Ragner, Joe. We'll have to do something. I can't go on waiting for you to make up your mind. Mrs. Ragner's not that kind of person either, I assure you.'

‘Oh Lord! Are we going to have this all over again? Listen, Maureen, I'm not going to do anything. Understand? A fat lot you have to worry about. I'm in constant work. I turn up a regular thirty bob, we always have enough to eat, and there's the best kid in the world. What more do you want? I take you to the show twice a week; I spend very little myself, an occasional pipe of tobacco, and I always have an odd bob for you when you want anything. That's my case; what's yours? I'll tell you! You want me to let your mother down, to break my promise. Well, I won't do it, and that's all I'm going to say on that matter. Now, so-long.'

‘Just a minute,' said Maureen, raising her voice.

‘Yes, all right. But don't wake the child. Talk quietly, and hurry up.' Mr. Kilkey stood by the door, one hand fiddling with the knob. ‘Hurry up,' he said.

‘Don't you understand what this will mean if Mrs. Ragner presses Mother further?'

‘I've said I'll see your mother myself, and that on one condition—that you keep away from Hatfields. This is a business I can handle as good as you. If you've been round harrying her, then that changes the whole case. I said not to, but I bet any money you have. Haven't you any common feelings left? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

‘Yes, I ought really, and I said good-bye to every feeling I ever had when I married you.'

‘You mean you left them outside this house for somebody else. Isn't that it? Here, I'm not going to talk to you any longer. It's going too far. I know you've been kicking yourself ever since we did get married, but here's the place for any feelings you have—inside this house. You're a queer crew, the lot of you. There's your youngest brother carrying on like a rake, and yet he can continue to live on at home just as though nothing's happened. Your mother's been living in the clouds, and she's got you all the same way. She's ruined the lot of you. Come down to earth. You want an excuse to fly off, so you turn round on your own mother. I don't care how much your mother's done or has to do. All I've got to consider is my word of honour. That's all.'

‘Peace at any price, that's your motto.'

Joseph Kilkey went out, the open door swung in the wind. The child woke up.

‘Yes, I
am
sorry I ever married him now.
Am
sorry. He's so damned soft.'

She began rocking the cradle furiously with her foot. Her anger found its only outlet in this furious rocking, the dead wood seemed to absorb it. The cradle swung violently from side to side. The draught came in. She stopped rocking and went and closed the door.

‘I'll swear on oath she's been round there,' said Mr. Kilkey, as he walked down the street. He went straight to St. Sebastian Place, but stood for a moment outside the chapel of St. Sebastian, as though undecided what to do. Then he went inside. There were a good many people there. As he knelt down in the pew he discovered an old woman sitting beside him. She was dressed in stiff black from head to heel, the only other colouring was furnished by her nut-brown face—at least, so it seemed to Joseph Kilkey as her upturned face caught the hidden electric-light, for her hands also were covered by black kid gloves. Her bonnet was ornamented with a large black glass brooch. She seemed to have recognized Mr. Kilkey, for she leaned forward and said breathlessly, ‘Good-evening, Mr. Kilkey, and I hope you are well?'

Mr. Kilkey made a magnificent sign of the Cross, then looked round at the speaker. ‘Good-evening, Miss Pettigrew,' he said.

Having said his preliminary prayer, he sat back on the bench. They talked in the same awed whispers, whilst people came and went into the confessional box.

‘Is Father Moynihan hearing to-night?' he asked.

‘Yes, that's the grand man, now, isn't he?' said Miss Pettigrew. ‘But tell me! What do you think of all the things that've been taking place at Fanny Fury's house? Fancy Denny going off to sea like that! It's astonishing, Mr. Kilkey. Poor Fanny, she'll feel quite lost without anybody to tell her troubles to.' And the old lady's face seemed to become enlarged by a smile that threatened to crack that parchment-like skin of hers, the while with the tip of one of her gloved fingers she rubbed her bottom lip.

‘I
was
surprised. Indeed I was, and only a day or two previous I found him hopelessly drunk on the floor of my shop. My word, Mr. Kilkey, Denny's anchor was down a long while, but how quickly it shot up, clean out of the water, so to speak. Ah well, sure, I wouldn't blame him for that. I was only surprised he was so long making up his mind. Mind you, it was disgraceful the way he went on in my shop. Oh, Mr. Kilkey, it was.'

Her head began to bob, not for the simple reason that Joseph Kilkey imagined, for Miss Pettigrew was not the kind of lady to feel suddenly inclined for forty winks at half-past seven in the evening. There were times, too, when both head and bonnet seemed in danger of becoming separated from the thin, scraggy neck that supported it. It was only Miss Pettigrew's vitality manifesting itself in this peculiar way. As she talked, she punctuated the words with her gloved fingers, which beat a ceaseless, noiseless tattoo upon the back of the pew.

‘The things that man said to me, Joseph Kilkey. I, who was the friend of the family. For years. Why, I remember Fanny's grandmother. I never go there now. I gave that up as soon as those children grew up and started working. I knew there'd be trouble. Well! Well! And now I must bid you good-night, Mr. Kilkey. Good-night.'