Winter Song (34 page)

‘Nothing! Nothing at all.'

The man turned—he saw the woman staring at him. ‘I thought you were asleep?'

‘Why don't you leave us alone? Why don't you go away? Go back to your own carriage. We never asked you to come here—we don't understand you—we don't want you.'

‘Allow me to say, Madam, that this here's a free country, and I'll travel where I like and when I like, nor will I ask any person's leave about what carriage I'll travel in, and that is plainly that. And I apologize if you think I have to, though I can't see how a chat about the weather—or about that place—could offend anyone. I know Mrs it's a rotten journey, it always will be, until that place falls and is no more. Sorry I barged in—but I'm an independent man, always have been—and I've my bit of dignity, too—and so I'll barge out.'

He immediately rose, slammed back the door, walked into the corridor, then stood looking at them for a moment.

‘
Good-day,
' he said—and went off.

But within a minute or two he was whistling again.

‘What a strange man.'

The old man sat up. ‘I only saw him this very minute. I must have fallen asleep.'

‘You did, Denny, and I was glad. The little sleep will help. It's a long way. I'm worried all the time—worried about bringing you all this way—worried about not seeing him—oh dear—let me take off that scarf. And your hat, Denny. Make yourself comfortable. There!' She removed his scarf—his hat.

‘Now we're by ourselves we'll have those sandwiches. Here's the flask. Take a nip of that brandy, Denny, then I'll have a sip.'

She took the packet of sandwiches from the small brown paper parcel she carried, and handed him one. He seemed hungry, he ate greedily of the bread and meat. She took a drink from the flask.

‘Who was he?' he asked.

‘Him! Nobody at all. Don't bother your head about him. I've been watching out of the window—there was such a pretty foal in the field gone by—and a great mare lying asleep—and around these parts I note how big the fields are. Sometimes it's like Ireland …'

‘He said he was going to that place, too.'

‘So he said.'

‘He has somebody there maybe—like us.'

‘I will tell why he goes. He goes to hang people—he is hanging some poor creature to-morrow.'

‘Glory be to God!' he said.

‘And now you know,' she said.

It had silenced him—she felt relieved—it was as if she had caught that man under the arms and flung him out of the window. He was gone for ever.

‘And how do you feel?'

‘I told you already, Fanny. I'm all right. Don't keep on at me.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘There's no need to be sorry.'

‘What should I be then?'

‘Don't let's have any bickerings, Fanny. This is the saddest day in my whole life. I sit here and I think about it, and I can barely speak—I can't even believe it. It's a most terrible thing. And
imagine!
'—there was real horror in his voice—‘travelling with a hangman.'

‘I know. It is strange and awful. That we should ever have had to do it. But now you're nibbling at the very thing you're always begging me to leave alone. Here, take this last sandwich, I don't want it.'

‘You eat it,' he said.

‘I don't want it.'

‘All right,' he said. He took it, began to eat. He saw she had become irritable, nervy. He kept silent, he thought, ‘This is the best I can do now, keep my mouth shut.' And he thought, ‘How good I've been at keeping my mouth shut—all my life.'

The train rattled over points, the carriages shook—but above the noise, and as though determined never to be drowned and never to be subdued, the monotonous whistling went on. It could only cease in Darnton—behind the tall grey walls.

‘That whistling gets on my nerves,' she said. ‘There mustn't be a single thing else in that man's head.'

But he was withdrawn again, lost. The scene flashed by—cows and poles—and stations, more cows and sheep, more poles—here a fugitive staring face—the flat lands, the rise and fall of the land, the hollow in the valley, the still air, the high hanging silence of this locked-in day. Once or twice the whistle blew.

‘I feel better after that brandy.'

‘I'm glad, Fanny,' he said. ‘You were up very early this morning.' He got up and came and sat by her. He put an arm round her shoulders, he smiled at her.

‘I feel a bit of an old crock now,' he said, ‘but Fanny, I must say I think you're brave. I think you're fine.'

‘Do you, Denny?'

‘I do that. There's always in you a bit of something I can admire. It's nice to say it.'

She gripped his hand.

‘When he comes in he will be grey as this day is grey—and silent—and something you once knew plucked from them eyes, and a withering mouth on him—and pale as pale. I tell you now, Denny, so that you won't get that violent lift in you that might throw you flat back on me again, after the trouble I've had coaxing you back to the bit of uprightness you have. He'll go there, to that place—away at the end of the table, and sit there—and he'll look at you and at me—and we'll look back. Try hard, Denny—try hard not to break, for you've always been brave yourself—try not to fall down on me—though God help you if it happened nothing could be fairer fallen than you—but try—and when he smiles, smile, and if he laughs, laugh out of you, and when he speaks, speak—but if he break—hold hard, Denny—he's the strength to drag up out of coming days, and you've none—it's spent and all gone. Oh, Denny, be seeing yourself properly—with no vainness to you—and no self-pity—it's too late. Christ knows I'd hug it hard to me did it come, but it won't—what I said, I said—our day is gone. You can't mend—nor I. So if he cries—try as hard as you can—don't cry. I've seen it once before in you—and it could break you up. Will you do that, darling? Will you try?'

‘You talk, Fanny, as though I were a bit of an old baby or something.'

‘And so you are,' she cried back—and hugged him. ‘And so you are truly, gone soft again.'

After a while he whispered, ‘I'll mind all you said, who has minded it all my days.'

‘That's good. I know, when we get there I don't want anything to spoil it—for Peter. The first time I went I was very upset—but though I know I'll be the same again the moment he comes into that room, I shan't show it. The warder there said it does things to them you'd never understand.'

The train had slowed up, was drawing slowly into the station.

‘We're there,' he shouted.

‘Not yet. Sit down there—we've a long way yet. I used to think that Darnton lay at the very end of the world—and wouldn't it be them as would put a gaol in such a place—you think the train will never, never stop. Oh look there,' she cried, ‘look there!'

The train had come to a dead stop. On the platform of a small wayside station a young girl was playing with a great hound. The woman in the carriage was quite entranced by this, and called to the old man to look. He came to the window.

‘What a pretty dog,' he said.

‘And what a lovely child,' the woman replied, who, in her excitement had dropped down the window, had put her head out, and was smiling at the girl, who had not seen her. The beautiful movements of the hound had caught the old man's eye.

‘A lovely creature,' he said, ‘I haven't seen such a beautiful hound since I was a boy down in Clare.'

And girl and hound had lightened the moment; they quite forgot themselves as they watched the long stride and leap of the hound as it tried to reach the morsel held in the girl's hand. They had reached the window of the carriage, and the girl, seeing the old people at the window, smiled to their smile, waved a hand and cried shrilly, ‘She wants it so badly and yet she's afraid.'

But when the steam hissed again, and the whistle blew, the colour had gone, and as the train moved slowly forward they had a last glimpse of the now appeased hound, flat out upon the platform, the girl standing beside it. They waved, but she did not see them, and had completely forgotten them.

‘Wasn't she a pretty girl, Denny? And so gay, so light and gay. I enjoyed watching their antics.'

‘A lovely beast,' he replied—he had barely noticed the child, he had not even noted the name of the station. The train chugged on, it had worn down the morning. They wondered what the time could be.

‘At half-past one to two o'clock we'll be there,' she said.

‘What will you say to him, Fanny, when he comes in?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Neither do I. It's awful trying to think of the best thing, the right words to say.'

‘What you must
not
say is that you're so sorry to see him there …'

‘That would be hard indeed,' he said, ‘for God knows I truly am.'

‘And don't say to him—well, one fine day you'll be home again. I said that to him, and he smiled and said nothing and I knew at once that all pretence is useless. In the end I just asked him how he was—and what kind of things he did in the prison—and did he get enough to eat. And in what sort of thing did he interest himself. It's a big ordeal for them. They're like them ponies in the pits, coming out of the darkness—and God knows it, too—they're almost as dumb.'

‘I first learned about all that business from a man I worked with on the ship. And I never liked the man—and then when he told me about it—and gave me a newspaper with all the story in—his wife had sent it to him—I liked him even less, for I'd the feeling that he had pleasure in telling me.'

‘That's hardly the thing to say about a shipmate.'

‘All the same I hated him for it. And nobody told me. Nobody wrote. Not a word.'

‘I can't be listening to that—this is no time of the day to be telling me them things. I said no,' she repeated, ‘I'll not listen—besides I'm bound up in thoughts of me own.'

Something broke in him—his iron patience cracked, the very sight of the carriage made him sick with impatience, and he exclaimed wildly, ‘When the
hell
are we arriving?'

‘Denny! Denny! Whatever's the matter?'

He sank into silence.

‘I'm sure he's getting tired, this dragging old train—you'd almost think it hated moving that way.'

Every moment she had carried a fear with her—a feeling of dread that perhaps he would not be able to stand the strain. Looking at him after his sudden outburst, she said to herself, ‘Don't speak. Not a word. Don't even look at him. Let the silence come again.'

‘When did you last see Peter?'

‘Nine months ago.' She avoided his eyes.

‘Has he had many visitors?'

‘Only me—Desmond once.'

‘And when you saw him that time did he ask about me?'

At last she looked at him—there was something grave and forbidding in her glance.

‘That time. You must not ask me about that time—for I had to say to him then that the sea had you, and it had, and when I said it, it was like a great old boulder had fallen from somewhere and come between us, hard and cold as cold is.'

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘I'm sorry, Fanny. Forgive me asking a thing like that. I mind at that time you knew where I was—but I did not know where I was, at that time—in heaven or in hell.'

‘We better talk no more about that, and I do beg of you, Denny, never again to mention that word sea to me—which I have hated and always will, don't speak sea to me—or ocean—its very smell rouses the blackness in front of my eyes. Will you
please
to remember that. That same sea is terrible to my eyes any time.'

‘All right,' softly, ‘all right, all right.'

‘Lay your old feet up there now—we're in the middle of a wilderness by the look of it, never a horse or cow or sheep, nor any man moving this half-hour gone—only those poles driving past you—it's all quiet, the train's lost somewhere in the middle of it. Nobody can mind, you rest with your feet up there.'

She got up. She lifted his legs on to the cushion saying, ‘Stretch yourself—be easy now.' He lay flat. She put the thick woollen muffler she carried under his head for a pillow.

‘That's better,' she said, ‘Why I think I'll do the very same. Imagine it. So few people on this train—so very few. And that old whistler seems to have gone to sleep, too, for I've never heard a sound from his carriage.'

She looked at him lying there, noted the narrowness of shoulder, the grey face, the veins on the wavering lids of his eyes which so reminded her of the wings of moths, the sunken jaws—and the junction of lines across the forehead, and falling heavily to the lower part of his face—the thin, out-jutting nose—as though these features were a country, a coast and she was studying the capes and cliffs and falls of this country. The iron grey hair cut so close to the scalp, and resting on his breast the yellowish mis-shapen hands, with their claw-like gestures, this life was a long clutch on something, and she knew, she saw—the clutch above waters, above seas and oceans, the constant, sentinel-like clutch against the dragging down—the single movement burnt in fast upon her brain—behind the always raised screen of fear—the sailor's wife lying, and love held in the pillow's hollow. She saw him grey and finished—but she saw him, she could lean over him, and there he was at last, safe, the flesh and the bone free at last from remorseless tides, a life safe. The heart beating, the breath rising out from between blue lips. It was as if she were seeing him now, for the first time—released from death. The faithful lover come home to her—there he was, inert, there he was blind with trust in her.

‘He never says much. What goes on in his old mind I don't rightly know. But I love him for the fact that he knows when to be silent. He knows there's something on me now, and there is—as we draw near to that cold mountain sucking my son's life away—because he thought that by striking a knife into a creature he could help me—and helped nobody in the end. And my old dream torn to tatters, gone—one good man, that's all I wanted—one good man.'