The Secret Journey (48 page)

Something made him exclaim desperately, ‘But Mother was very lonely. I knew as soon as I heard Grandfather was going. You see, it's unusual for Mother to do a thing like that. It completely bewildered me at first,' he concluded, never shifting his eyes from her face.

‘What, asking you to stay and keep her company?'

‘No!' he said impatiently. ‘Her letting Grandfather go home to Ireland.'

‘Nothing unusual in that, my dear Peter! He has a right to go home if he wants to.'

‘It's a strange thing for Mother to do, that's all I know. But never mind that. Are you angry with me?'

‘I was so angry about everything. I'm sorry. I never meant it. I couldn't hurt you,' she said, but he made no response. He gave no sign. ‘Aren't you going to come and see me again?'

‘No!' he said angrily. ‘I can't now! I don't want to see you again. It's all a farce. You only fool me. You even fooled me on that bench, you——'

‘Oh, Peter darling, how can you be so cruel as to say that? Fooled you. Why, I was nothing but myself. I was only being what I am. A woman. You poor boy. You are so highly strung, and nervous too. But you will come to see me.'

He blazed with anger, struck his fist into his chest and said, ‘No! No!' Then he ran.

She called to him, ‘Peter! Peter!' She began running herself.

But Peter Fury had gone. It was as though his own defeated self had suddenly risen and mocked him, as if his own impotent anger had at last found voice, and had violently shaken him and sent him on his way. He ran down Devon Road, crossed the Avenue, and continued running until he reached the Forester Hall, where he stopped to rest. Leaning against the wall he felt he wanted to cry again, to shout his rage upon that dark and deserted street. Were they all like that?

‘I don't believe her! I don't believe her! Oh, Sheila! You make me simply hate you, and I do hate you—and I hate myself.' Yes. She had been everything. All his hours and days were coloured by thoughts of her, every fibre of his body retained the ecstasies he had experienced, every thought was of her. How he had longed each day, longed for the evening and the darkness that dragged him night after night relentlessly, tirelessly to that flashing light on the horizon. Always he had seen her face, her lovely eyes, her laughing mouth, and he forgot his misery, he forgot his home, forgot the secrecy, the stares, the lies, the struggle, the everyday monotony. If he only knew! If!

‘But I don't! I can't believe her now. Once she said she hated Desmond, and now she says it's different. Desmond! Lucky pig! It would be him—one like him—who would have Sheila! I hate him too. I loathe them both. They all seem the same. Full of their own importance. They're grown up. But aren't I? Damn and blast! It began with Mother! Yes, it began with her. How sly these women are! They can poison you with their affection if they like.'

He began to laugh! For he saw now a clear picture of Mrs. Ragner, with her greasy skin, her claw-like fingers, her heavy rings, her hair that was too black and her eyes that were too wide open. He saw her reclining upon a couch—he heard her talking again.

‘She's mad,' he thought. ‘Mad. And I took some of her money. She's mad! She thinks she's hated by everybody—that her money has soured her. Yes. I think I even hurt her when I laughed. But I am afraid of that man, Corkran! Yes, I am afraid of him. I believe he's watching. Yes. I believe it's him who presses the button—who makes the borrowers dance—aye, he'd make Mother dance. He's got her in a trap just like he says he's got Mrs. Ragner. But why in the name of God is Mother so ashamed to admit that she is in a net? Who can help her out of it if she won't let herself be helped?

‘It's funny now when I come to think of it. My schooldays in Gelton—running messages for Mr. Dingle in the evenings, going home to bread-and-tea suppers.

‘I was happy then. Nothing seemed miserable until I started to grow up. Then everything altered. Then what I never seemed to notice suddenly revealed itself to me. It was misery. The misery of struggling day after day, the rows and rows and rows that must have echoed in every room in the house. Not enough money. Money! Money! That was more than seven years ago. Maureen says it's always been like that. So now I know why she hates me. Because I was educated on their money. They hate me because I'm intelligent, because I learned what they never learned, as if it's any bloody good after all. And Desmond's sly with Mother. Making me feel it more than ever. And Dad's devil-may-care. It's all wrong. It's all wrong. Sheila says she's found a meaning in living. So have I. I used to think I hated Hatfields like poison, Hatfields and all its filthy streets. Now I see I was wrong. It's only the houses, the grey bricks and mortar, the unwashed windows, the smelly bone yard, the dirty children, the dirtier yards, and everything rotting in this beastly place. How I used to love going fishing with Desmond! Away from all that. Yes. We were all the same. Maureen as well! Smiling outside and frowning inside. And how it used to enrage Mother! Poor Mother! That's what makes her so mad, this being stuck here for ever, for ever, for ever and ever. Never a holiday, never a shilling in her pocket.

‘Why shouldn't I feel ashamed, not only of disappointing her, but of being inconsiderate and mean, yes, even running off to Sheila, whom I love so much, who makes all the drabness vanish, who makes everything beautiful, because she is beautiful herself?'

He walked slowly along, past the Town Hall, and stopped for a moment to look at the deserted square, as he said to himself, ‘Yes, and this time last year, this time last year I met that lunatic with the deer-stalker, who sat behind me on that stone lion, when the horses charged. And how they cracked those heads, knocked those poor women down, even knocked a piece out of Mr. Postlethwaite's skull, who never hurt a fly in all his life. There's George. How happy George is! Never need bother about girls. And his old mare—Nabob. Nabob. Morning, noon, and night, Nabob. Fancy calling a mare Nabob.' And he smiled to himself.

‘Ah! They're happier than we are—though they're only working people just like us. But perhaps that's because they're not Catholics. Ugh! I hate them! And the way that fellow Father Moynihan calmly takes Mother's shilling on a Sunday. For the Church. H'm! Many a packet of cigarettes I've seen him buy with the same shilling that Mother's struggled to scrape together.

‘H'm! A lot of bloody good her relations are. All stony-broke—all full of themselves, all good livers, and all hoping for a happy death. I remember the times when I served behind Father Moynihan on the altar. I used to think how terrible it was—and, hell! it was fierce. But all that makes me laugh now.'

He thrust his hands in his pocket, and assuming a somewhat jaunty gait, whistled his way along until he reached the beginning of Mile Hill. Suddenly he stopped, and something seemed to turn all cold in him.

‘Heavens! I've forgotten! I've never given a thought. Supposing Mother has gone to that house?' He increased his pace. He forgot everything now. Only one thought remained engraved upon his mind. He was full of fear. Supposing something had happened. Supposing that man had split. ‘He
would
split, that cruel, sinister, sly-looking devil would. He'd even murder. And he knows! He spied on me. He watched us. He knows—he saw her kiss me—saw her give me money. Oh, God! Why did I take it? What made me so foolish? Why didn't I realize when she kissed me—why didn't I see her game? And I could almost feel his dirty grin—almost feel it touching my face!'

He began to run. A clock struck eleven. ‘What's the use?' he said, and fell into a walking pace once again. Here was the King's Road. All silent here too. Dead-like, as though nobody had ever lived—ever breathed in the place. Even Mr. Quickle's shop was black and drab, and those iron railings with the lamplight falling upon them—how like the gateway they were—the entrance to some gloomy prison. The mist had crept in over the river. It came up the little streets like waves. Soon it was a thick fog. But here was the end of the King's Road. Hatfields at last.

Peter Fury stopped. Never before had he contemplated Hatfields on such a night as this, and at such a time. Behind the sea of roofs, roofs that seemed but a grey blur behind the ever-thickening fog, he could see the glow from the furnace in the boiler-house of the bone factory. He could see the closely packed houses, whose front doors were open the livelong day, twenty-two doors on either side of the street that seemed to manifest that calm indifference to the other's existence. The steps on which the inhabitants sat, the gutters in which the children played, the lamp-post—the lamp with its broken glass, and the liquid light throwing a sort of dull glare into the fog-laden atmosphere of the street. The hard cobbles upon which lay stretched the fantastic shadows created by the street lamps, but which were now blotted out by the spreading white blanket. The air was damp, and there was the unmistakable tang of the sea about this white cloud that had come in from far across the river. How lonely and deserted. How horribly and fantastically silent, as if all life lay helpless beneath the pall, as if it had struck power from the tongue, light from the lamp, struck meaning and purpose from these two rows of dingy houses that had held each other up for so long. And there at the end of the street was Mr. Quickle the jeweller's.

‘Mr. Quickle,' thought Peter. ‘He seems to have lived at the corner of Hatfields for years and years and years.'

Yes. No doubt about it at all. There was one everlasting quality about Mr. Quickle. ‘Just imagine. He'd remember Mother when she was a girl. Before any of us were born. What a long, long, long time it seems we have been living in this same, stinking street. But Mother seems to have lived here years and years and years, and Grand-dad must have walked up and down here many a time.' He leaned against the wooden shutters of Mr. Quickle's.

How peaceful it was to-night, more than any other night he had known. How the fog had changed it all. It hardly seemed Hatfields at all. And those dirty chimneys looked just like a long row of very tall black hats.

‘Just think of it! Father about twenty-three and Mother eighteen. Dear me! And now she's fifty-nine and Dad's sixty-two. And somehow there doesn't seem to have been a single reason for living for sixty years. Neither is satisfied. They're just as restless even as I am—although they're old. But they can remember things. I can't. They have the advantage there.'

In spite of the cold, damp atmosphere, he took out a handkerchief and, laying it on the stone step of Mr. Quickle's private house, sat down and leaned his head against the door. Prees Street was unlike Hatfields, indeed Hatfields was like no other street in the whole of Gelton. And how splendid it was that when he first woke of a morning his thoughts turned towards the other street, where she lived, and every thought of her quickened the hours so that in the evening his feet trod this magic path to the beautiful thing that had come into his life. He could forget everything then.

He heard the measured tread of a policeman, and got up at once. Then he walked down to number three. The door was slightly ajar, the heavy door-mat pushed against it to prevent it blowing open. The house was in darkness. He let himself in, closed the door without a sound, and went into the kitchen. For a moment he stood in the darkness, the glow from the ever-burning fire throwing a huge and fantastic shadow of himself upon the opposite wall.

Then he lit the gas. ‘Why, yes. He has gone. Grandfather's really gone.' The chair was no longer standing in the corner by the cupboard. It had gone with its occupant. ‘I never thought he would go,' he said aloud. ‘Never.'

Then he took the teapot from the hob. It had been stewing there for the past hour. He ate some bread and butter, drank a cup of the bitter tea, then put the things away in the back kitchen. How terribly quiet the house was. How terribly quiet.

‘Mother's gone to bed, I suppose.' He looked round the kitchen. ‘Grand-dad on the sea—Anthony on the sea. All on the sea excepting me. I feel a proper swine.'

He took off his shoes, crept upstairs, and tiptoed to his mother's room. He stood listening. He could hear her deep breathing. He opened the door and looked in. Mrs. Fury was fast asleep.

Closing the door, he went into Mr. Mangan's room. Not a sound, and the room quite dark in spite of the uncurtained window. It was open, and the smell of the fog was in the room. He took a match from his pocket and struck it on his trousers' leg. The fog seemed to smother the light. It went out. ‘Yes. He's gone! Can you believe it. Really gone!'

The bed was stripped except for the mattress: something made him put his hand under this. It touched papers. He drew them out, held them in his hand for a moment, then quickly pushed them back again. He felt like a thief. Why had he done it? He had not known they were there. If anybody had opened the door they would not have seen him, for the fog was thick in the room.

He left the room as silently as he had entered and went to his own. Here the window had been open all day, and this like the back room was full of fog. Somehow it seemed nothing to him that his grandfather's room should look so cold and deserted, and now full of the fog that still rolled in across the river. Anthony Mangan's own life was like that fog now. But the fog had crept in here too. Into his own room.

He went downstairs again; a stair creaked, and he swore under his breath. How warm and cheery the kitchen looked after those damp, cold rooms. There was the sofa. His father used to lie on that of an evening when he came home tired after the day's work. And there was the table. The same old table. He remembered when half a dozen sat round it. The whole family, including his grandfather.

And how bare the dresser seemed. There was his mother's old hat—hanging over the wooden eagle that ornamented the top part of the dresser. And there one of his father's greasy caps. The big green vases were no longer there.