The Secret Journey (43 page)

‘The way people talk!' she said to herself, ‘and I'm extremely surprised at Miss Pettigrew. They have a home, they have food, and money coming in. Good Lord! What more can Fanny want? I wonder? Ah! She's as deep as the devil.' The words ‘No Enquiries here' might well have been blazoned over the door of number three Hatfields. How did she live? What did she do from day to day? What were her thoughts? Had she any hopes—was she still as overpowering as ever?' No! I certainly don't think so,' Miss Mangan told herself. ‘She's lost that, and a good job too.' What she thought of the family she had raised, and of the man responsible, was something Miss Mangan had no urgent desire to know. The hours would fly and soon she'd be out of it altogether. Father and she. But at the bottom of her mind there lay hidden a fugitive thought that now and again stole to the surface and worried her very much, but her own reasoning always sent this fugitive and furtive thought scurrying back to its hiding-place.

‘But I just can't help thinking of that poor girl,' she kept telling herself again and again. ‘I just can't! I don't know what it is—maybe I do really hold her in my affections—I don't know what it is—but when I think of her tied to that ugly old devil! What a madwoman that woman is! Driving her children away all the time. She simply won't hear their point of view. It's narrow and selfish. And by God, what a fool—what an ass—and what a selfish young prig she's made of that boy! Priesthood! God forbid! She's really beyond me. There's that lad, if I really believe what passes into my ears—there he is gadding about with a woman old enough to be his mother! There must be something very queer about these Gelton people—awfully queer. They can't look you straight in the face. They look as though somebody was running after them all the time—and dirty! Heavens! But there you are! What's bred in the bone, as they say. Yet Fanny—yet Fanny—poor creature—she's been sucked in with the rest of them. Well, you can't tell her anything. She doesn't want to know anything. She knows everything. I wonder?'

Fanny Fury passed out of Miss Mangan's mind, and Mr. Mangan took her place.

‘It's funny that though Dad had a little black box with him when he went away he hasn't got it now. I
wish
!—I
wish
I knew what's been going on here. I'd like to ask that fellow Peter, but I'm afraid. He's just as thick with his mother as ever he was. Oh you fool, Fanny, you great generous fool!' cried Brigid Mangan in her mind as she got up and straightened the bed-clothes. Then she went to the mirror and tidied her hair.

Mrs. Fury was calling, ‘Brigid! Brigid!'

‘Coming! Coming!' called out Brigid, giving her head a final pat, ‘coming.—If that man were here this evening I know he'd place a big chalk mark on the ceiling,' she thought as she went off downstairs where her sister was already waiting.

‘I'm ready now,' she said. ‘Are you, Fanny? I hate being late at the play.'

‘I've been waiting some five minutes,' remarked Fanny, and she pulled out the hat-pin from her black straw and jabbed it in again, saying, ‘Let's go.'

‘Everything serene?—as that man of yours used to say,' asked Miss Mangan.

‘Yes. Do come on!' urged Mrs. Fury, whose patience had come to an end, but Brigid still stood, looking very concerned.

‘What's the matter, Brigid? Aren't you going out after all this getting ready? Good heavens! You're just like Denny.'

‘Are you sure Father is all right?' asked Brigid Mangan. ‘You amaze me. The risks you take. Supposing anything happened to him?'

‘Whatever happened would probably concern you far more than myself. Come along,' said Mrs. Fury, and she half pushed Brigid out on to the step. ‘Dad is quite safe, I suppose. I've had to manage this for years, Brigid. Besides, if anything
did
happen—though God forbid—well, Mrs. Postlethwaite always knows when I'm out. She has her own key, which fits my house, and anyway, I always leave word with her where I'm going. But Dad's gone past that stage now. One doesn't have to worry so much. He can't set fire to himself, and he can't fall out of the bed, so there now.' And the door of number three Hatfields banged to, and the two sisters went off down the street.

‘There's them two queer sisters ‘had only to be spoken once, by a slatternly-looking old woman coming up the street with her daughter, to set Brigid Mangan's ears burning.

‘Heavens! Fanny, every time I walk down this blessed street I wish for the very ground to swallow me up. How you can stand that sort of nosying, day after day, is beyond me. Oh, look! There's the car.'

Miss Mangan started to run. It was here that she made her fatal mistake, and one that almost wrecked her whole evening, for she had not reckoned with that curious and ever-watchful element in the neighbourhood of Hatfields, which starts to life at the sight of a well-dressed though very buxom lady running breathlessly down the street, nor had she reckoned with that curious quality which a thirty years' residence had implanted in Mrs. Fury. When Miss Mangan began to run, it was her sister who cried out within herself for the ground to open and swallow her, for she and not Brigid had tasted fully of the fruits of that malignant, if not bestial curiosity, that strange, wilful, bat-like groping into all the sacred recesses of life, that seemed the horror not only of Hatfields but all Gelton. Mrs. Fury said in her mind, ‘The whole street is staring at me,' and wanted to sink into the earth.

‘Brigid!' she called.

But Brigid had run on. This opening of doors, this staring of passers-by, the rude remarks, the moving of curtains, the laughs of children—these things had so affected Miss Mangan as to make her dash madly down the street, bag flying in the air, her short fat legs well exposed to view, her bosom rising and falling tempestuously, though they had made Mrs. Fury stop dead as though she were paralysed.

The tram had long since gone, and Brigid Mangan now stood panting like a racehorse, holding her sides, leaning against a lamp-post, her mouth half open, breath coming in terrific gasps, her face turning a beetroot red. Somehow Mrs. Fury managed to reach her.

‘Brigid! Fancy running like that! If you were a young girl one would not mind so much—but at your age, in your present state—really it's silly. I have enough people staring at me. My God! I could have fallen where I was standing. Oh, Brigid, if you lived here for just a little while, you'd learn more than if you'd lived five hundred years in Ireland. The people are terrible!'

‘Don't I know?' cried Aunt Brigid. ‘Isn't that what made me run? Fanny, I could never come here again. Never! Never! I loathe being stared at. And you can hear them whispering on the steps; is that all they have to do? Just stare like a lot of cows?'

‘That's all! Now here's a tram. And mind how you get on. The steps are high.'

Mrs. Fury was full of apologies. As soon as they had taken their seats, she said:

‘I don't know really what made me not go out the back way. All the years I've lived in that house I've always used the back entrance. And so have the children. Denny never would. He said, “Blast the bloody people!” All right for him, who only saw the street twice in a whole year, when he was home from sea. People are awful, Brigid. Not a man or woman knocks at my door, but another passes—and not only mine, it's the same in every house. I've been surprised at the things I've been told. They might as well not have walls at all, I do believe they hear all you say. Back or front, there's always somebody there! And you dressed in brown from head to foot——' She began laughing—‘You were asking for it! But it's simply amazing, Brigid. If you should as much as hint that you prefer to mind your own business, they become quite offended as though you'd insulted them. Oh, sometimes I
wish
I could get a house out of it. Anywhere else. I'm always making up my mind to do it, then something comes along and there you are! The curious thing is that now I have a chance to go somewhere else, and d'you know, I haven't a mind at all. I'm just lazy. That's what's wrong with me,' and she began laughing again. ‘I'm getting lazy—I'm getting that way I don't want to move—do anything.'

‘Yes. Yes, Fanny! I
wish
, too, you could get a change. It's shameful! You must pull yourself together, woman—you're all to pieces and it's not good for you, Fanny. You're no chicken now, you know. Are you, Fanny?' and her smiling red face seemed almost to touch that of her sister. ‘Is it far to the place?'

‘Not far! We're there now. Let's go down on to the platform. The tram might not stop, and I'll have to ring the bell. They'd kill you on these cars without thinking twice about it. There's all the difference, Brigid—right before your eyes, and under your nose—there's all the difference between living in Gelton and living in Cork. In Cork you can live peaceful and people are decent. In Gelton one never asks for it, one never expects it. They've known nothing about ordinary decent things.'

Miss Mangan began making her way along the top deck. ‘Yes, that's it. That's just it,' she said, but her thoughts were miles away. They got off, and began climbing the hill. People were already queueing-up at the Lyric. Miss Mangan opened her bag and took out two tickets.

‘Well, they're there, anyhow,' she said. ‘Fanny, I want you to enjoy yourself this evening. Heaven knows when I shall see you again. And if I ever do, let's hope things are better, and do try, won't you—do try to shake off that awful habit you've got into lately of letting everything go. You mustn't do it, my dear woman. Think how spirited, how courageous you were at one time, and now when you have a chance of getting a little quiet and comfort, you don't even want to put out a hand to grasp it. Cheer up, Fanny. Let's go in and have a nice hot gin—or would you like a glass of hot ale or stout?'

They crossed the road and went into ‘The Beefsteak,' where Miss Mangan wisely decided to have a hot ale herself. There was a good ten minutes to spare, and it seemed to her that it might be put to good account. She might not get an opportunity like this again. Fanny was seemingly in the best of spirits. After all, there would be no harm in broaching a question or two on a convivial occasion such as this. Brigid waited until her sister had sipped from her glass, and raising her own she said, ‘Fanny! I've often wondered what Father's pension was. It wasn't very substantial, I don't suppose.' Then she drank.

‘A few shillings a week,' replied Mrs. Fury. ‘I hope you don't think Father was a millionaire.'

‘What do you take me for, woman? I know well enough he wasn't a millionaire, but at the same time, Fanny, he was no pauper.
Dear
no. Father was certainly depending on nobody's charity.' She affected a slight perturbation and looked far over her sister's head. ‘Really, woman, you must sometimes doubt my intelligence. What do you think I'm driving at?' She rang the bell on the table, but this was purely by accident. Brigid Mangan said, ‘Nothing, thanks,' to the barman, and took up her glass again.

‘What
are
you driving at, Brigid? I hope you don't think that I've gained anything from looking after Father. Dad has his small pension and no more. The man is quite penniless. It runs in the family,' she said.

‘I thought,' began Brigid—but Mrs. Fury rattled her glass on the table.

‘Don't think anything,' said Mrs. Fury. ‘There's nothing for you to think about now, excepting to get the old man safely across the water. Father has no money, if that's what you think,' and Brigid Mangan seemed to shrink before her sister's eyes.

‘Fanny! You are a one, but then I understand you so well, don't I?' She smiled now. ‘Don't spoil other people's genuine good feelings just because life has soured you now.'

‘It's the way you put things, Brigid. You're so clumsy, whereas I am not. One is never clumsy in Hatfields. Besides, there's never time for thinking.'

‘Oh, this is just silly,' protested Brigid. ‘This argument over a hot drink—and aren't we going to the Variety? All I asked was how much Father got a week. I never asked you to jump down my throat. Be cool, Fanny! One would imagine I was accusing you of poisoning him. Come along. It's time to go.'

Brigid Mangan was a lady who rarely swore, but she swore now, not loudly, but very secretly in her own self. She had put her foot in it. ‘Am I clumsy?' she asked herself. ‘I only wanted to find out in some way what became of Dad's black box, and there's the education of that boy. That must have cost money. The Catholic Church didn't pay for that, for the Catholic Church is poor itself and wants all the money it can get. Oh, blast!'

Having tickets, the two women did not have to wait in the queue, but went straight into the Lyric, and took their seats in the pit, about six rows from the stage. The air smelt strongly of oranges, beer, and tobacco. The auditorium hummed with conversations, loud and low; laughs broke out; somebody kept shouting, ‘Give him one up the bloody backside and be done with it,' and in the midst of this commotion Brigid Mangan and her sister sat in complete silence. They both looked the one way, it is true, for the safety curtain had rolled up and the lights had been extinguished. The bioscope had come into action. The marionette-like actions of the figures were greeted with bursts of laughter, in which Mrs. Fury herself joined. Miss Mangan, whom Nature had surely endowed to laugh at such simple and innocent pleasure, sat firm as a rock. Once or twice Mrs. Fury said, ‘That was good, wasn't it?' and Miss Mangan's reply sounded rather like a very dignified ‘Ahem!' But at last the ice broke. The lights were up again—the screen had vanished and the impatient audience began joining in the overture, accompanying it with much shuffling of feet and clapping of hands. When the brightly uniformed attendant came out to put the number of the turn in the slot, the audience cheered wildly.