Winter Song (49 page)

“Shall I go down that path, through that door, like I used to do, in the old days?” No. Perhaps he had better not. But he would walk towards Hatfields. “We lived there once upon a time, that was our home.”

The day was breaking into pieces, dusk descending. Rays of coloured light fell across his path, and he immediately thought of a rainbow. This gave the long, narrow street the appearance of a tunnel. He half turned his head and there was the light, the wide window, and over the door in shining brass he read the name of a chemist. He went into this shop and asked for the directions to Hatfields. He was given this, quickly, curtly, and he forgot to thank the chemist for his service. He hurried away.

“Is it worth it? What the hell's the use?” Yet he longed to see this road again, to see and count every house. He wanted to come closer to old places. It was quite dark when he entered it. There was the great wall flanking the railway, there the familiar post office, the same ugly Methodist chapel, the newsagents, they were all here. Nothing had changed. He might never have left it. He walked slowly down one side, and came up on the other. He called out to himself the numbers of these houses, all of whose curtains were now drawn, with here and there a reflection of fires in darkened front rooms. Hidden by the shadow of the wall he stood looking at what had once been his home. Touching this brick, staring at this door, watching the window, feeling back to every living moment he could remember, he at once knew that compulsion had come to a halt. This had been the direction all along, from the opening of a gate, when he stepped clear of the high wall, and he had heard the key and the bolt shot behind him. This was where he had been walking to from the moment of freedom. Here it was, and it was over, done with, finished. He stepped clear of the wall and retraced his steps down the street. Behind him there was a noise like thunder, and he stopped to listen. An old sound, he had heard it before. The street was suddenly full of hurrying men, from the docks, the shipyards, the repairing shops, from the tugs, the dredgers, the dockgates, and from every shed. This was their road home. He had often walked behind them as a child. “Now I must find The Curving Light,” he thought, and stepped up his pace towards the docks. Everywhere lights came up like eyes, the whole world seemed on the move as he turned into one street after another. And there at last was The Curving Light, and he was standing alone in the longest street in a sailor's town.

He saw the light. It threw down a beam like a scimitar. He remembered this place. He had passed it many times before. A man passing beneath this light had his shadow cut in two. He drew nearer. Always, day or night, there was somebody stood beneath this light that never went out. Narrow enough to shut off the sky, long enough to make a great funnel to the sea. And as he drew nearer he saw the shadows. He saw two men, one short, one very tall. Their shoulders were bent, their close together heads almost touched each other. He could see their lips moving, but no sounds came out. He drew nearer still. The men were whispering to each other. Words do not travel far from conspiratorial tongues. If he got close enough to them he would hear what they were saying. The gently swinging light played havoc with their shadows. Within a few feet of them he suddenly stopped, drew in to the wall. The very look of these men aroused his curiosity. The tall one stood listening to the other, seemed almost bent in two. They might have been a couple of goblins from the inferno. What made him stand there, what made him listen? Peter did not know. He just stood there, and he listened.

“Has he gone?”

“Yus.”

“Good! Good!”

“Bit of trouble with him though.”

“How much?”

“Well, the silly bastard told his missus he was sailin' in her at midnight, and at once she got a-feared 'count of that ship's rottenness, but he said he didn't care since he had got this damned boat at last, what's hard to get these days, he told her, and anyhow he said to her he was sick and rare sick of her growlin' at him day after day, and night after night about having no ship. At him all the time she was about something he could never mend without a miracle, and her cried the night he was goin' in her. But he cared no damn, he didn't, why should he, cos if he lost that ship he might never get another one for God knows how bloody long, he said, and she was still cryin' at him about goin' in her what would sink anyhow, she's certain, and her hung on to him at the front door near midnight and begged him not to go, saying, ‘Don't go in her, Andrew, don't go, she'll sink, I know it, I feel it,' and he got right mad at her then, him hearing that boat blowing, and he beat her senseless then cos he was a-feared, and left her there by the front door and run off, and took with him only one silk handkerchief what was all the clobber he had by him then. And the man next door said it was sad him knockin' her up like that cos her was a good woman any time.”

“Well, he's gone, and that's all that matters, and we click, what means five pounds to me and ten bob to you, Guttlaw.”

“Yus.”

“And how about Mrs. McGinty?”

“Her supplied one man. Lackmass got him. Lackmass's the fust man I ever saw with only half a mouth, 'struth. He went along to where he had to go to as he was told by McGinty, and he picked up the first drunk what he saw lying aside a tart, and he heaved him up on his back and carried him out of that red light shop what shall be nameless to you and me, Argy, and carried him all along through them streets, and saw no one, and no one didn't see him, and McGinty was waiting on him soon's he got to her place, standing on her own step she was, gone midnight, and at once she says to Lackmass, ‘Get him down to the
Truculent
right away what's waiting on one miserable man.' And he went off then with this chap still sat on his back, and carried him all again through them streets, and come by that
Truculent
what's fair wrapped up in the dark she is, and he carried him up her gangway, and chucked him down. And as he was coming down again he heard a noise, and he turned, and it was an officer at her gangway head what was shoutin' loud enough to shift his own liver, ‘Where's his bloody leg?' he says, becos you couldn't stand that one on his feet drunk or sober, and Lackmass went off then searching about the quay for his leg what had dropped off him, it having a screw loose in it. But he found it all right lying up agin a coil of manilla, and he picked it up and hurled it back up her gangway where it dropped and rolled heavy along her iron, sounding like thunder. Then he come straight back to Mrs. McGinty and collected his commission what was ten bob same as me.”

“He did, did he?”

“Yus.”

Peter listened, flat to the wall, he knew the words, he understood the language. This was nothing new. And suddenly the two men shifted their positions, and he saw them more clearly. It looked as though Guttlaw had at an early age, been heavily pressed down by nature. He stood sideways to his companion, as though this
was
his position, a sidler up to humanity, a sidler up, drowned in an overcoat. Perhaps he slept in, lived in, this overcoat. A wonderfully long, heel-touching, all-embracing coat. He would drown comfortably inside the cloth. His features were almost hidden by the vast peak of a cap; it was like a visor, it hid the Guttlaw countenance. But he removed it suddenly, and Peter saw that he had a shark's mouth. Guttlaw
was
his mouth. These men were night creatures, they prowled upon night and air; daylight would require big eyes to find them. The taller of the two looked upwards, then stepped clear of the doorway and the light. He was immediately followed by the dwarfish Guttlaw.

“Your way's north, and mine's south.”

“Yus.”

“Night then.”

“Night.”

For some minutes Peter remained pinned to the wall. He watched them go slowly down the street, heard them talking, and waited until he could no longer hear the sound of their footsteps. So this was the place. This was where he would room for the night. It would do, and it was handy to the boat he now intended to catch. He passed beneath the curving light and went inside. He had hardly entered the hall before he was aware of two eyes staring out at him through a wire grille, and as he got nearer he saw the woman stood behind a kind of wire cage. This then was Ma Talon. It certainly could not be anybody else. He advanced on the cage.

“Well?”

“I want a room for one night,” Peter said.

“Sit down.”

He sat down, he studied Ma Talon. Tall, powerfully built, coarse, and, seemingly, stupid with health. She was barrel-shaped. He was struck by the fine head, covered by a mass of almost raven-black hair. She had a neck like the foot of a mast. An amazon indeed, he thought. The moment she spoke he knew where she came from, and it was not Halifax. “The Halifax Stone” came from the country where everything is green.

“Name?”

“Fury.”

“Supper?”

“No.”

She bent to her desk, he watched her writing something in a book, and all the time he was wondering if he had seen her somewhere before. She gave him the impression of ultimate physical power. The moment she raised her head and looked at him again, Peter had the answer. He had seen her like on many occasions. Stood at the bottom of O'Connell St., with the large, flower-filled basket lying at her feet, and an endlessly sweeping skirt widespread, from beneath which would be glimpsed the gay colour of a bright petticoat. Yes, and he had seen her standing in a narrow path, alone, quiet, and very intrigued as the last of the mourners walked away from Paddy Dignam's funeral. He had seen this woman on a Ringsend corner on any fine Sunday morning, talking and laughing with one of God's men, and a darling look sat on her great gob. And certainly she must have often heard the wind curl up out of Dublin Bay and whistle round the Guinness bottle.

“Here's your ticket. One bed, one breakfast, room thirty-nine, fourth floor up, don't make a noise, careful of a pot in the window third landing, do not keep lights on after ten, not allowed, do you want calling, and what time?” He told her.

“Which way?”

“That way.”

“Good-night,” Peter said.

But she seemed not to hear him, and it did not matter. He began to climb. The first landing, and then the second, these stairs might yet wind to high heaven. Once or twice he slipped on them, carpetless, much worn, and he was carefully aware of the gigantic pot, the shadow of which he saw even in the half darkness of his climb. The third landing. Darker still, and a silence that seemed absolute. He moved slowly along the corridor, striking matches as he went.

“What an odd place. Good Lord! The times I've passed that light outside, and never once looked in. And here I am actually inside the place. That seaman likes one tight corner of a port without a doubt.” And there was the door. He held up another match. A tall, brown, paint-peeling door, a rusty knob. The moment he touched it it came out and fell to the floor. Another match. This time it worked. He opened the door and went inside. “I wonder why she never supplies anybody with a key.”

He stood in the centre of the dark room, and only by feel did he at last find the window. He tore off its covering. He stood at it, looking out, where in the distance he could see the lights upon the river. Well, here it was. The first move. He was on his way somewhere, at last.

“I am alone,” thought Peter, “I am shut in, I am safe.” He stretched his arms, he slumped down on the bed, his hat fell off, and he watched it roll to the floor. Quietly he removed his shoes, and drawing his feet up the bed began vigorously rubbing them. He sat up, and began a furious swinging of his arms; he rubbed his hands together. And as he drew his feet up under him he realized that he had finally stopped walking, that he was safe in this room. He had come the long way, half sleeping, half dreaming, through the alleys and courts, across the streets, round the corners, in and out of the holes, for this was the patterned way to Mrs. Talon's place, where anything on two legs that called itself human might find a hole to sit in.

“Extraordinary! Just as I closed the Kilkey door, and stood for a moment outside the window, the name came to me. I remember this place.”

He stretched in the bed. “Poor Kilkey. Poor old man. Another tug on the heart would have killed him. And now I'm sorry I was so churlish, so irritable, so bad-tempered towards that harmless old creature. I'll see him again, I'll explain. I'll try to do things sensibly. But now I'm shut in, safe.”

He climbed in under the bedclothes, stretched himself again, wished to get warm. He looked at a brown patch on the ceiling. In the next room a lodger snored, and a step on the stairs sent a noise rattling through his head. He shut his eyes, pressed his fingers over them. He could hear the noise going on in the big kitchen below stairs. From time to time coke fell from the great stove with a clatter. The slightest sound made him jump. Mrs. Talon's voice leaping up out of the darkness had made him shudder. He thought of the walk to the city. The zig-zag route through the endless corridors, between the walls of silence. He thought of the gaunt warehouses, the windswept roads. Walking, unable to stop walking. Feeling cold, trying to get warm, feeling lost, trying to find himself. “I ought to undress,” he thought, “yes, I must undress.”

All day he had swum in the sea, had risen and fallen and tossed on the sweeping waves of memories. He felt ashamed, frightened, horrified. Memories numbed him.

In the next room the snoring grew louder. “Christ!” he shouted, “can't you stop snoring?”

He hammered on the wall. Suddenly he glanced up at the ceiling. “Now I know what that brown patch is,” he said, “it's Hatfields.” Somebody kicked the door.

“I say,
you
in there. I don't know who the hell you are, and I don't care neither, but if you can't sleep, then go out for a bloody walk.” Peter remained quite still. After a moment or two he heard the footsteps dying away in the corridor. Suddenly he was following them, down the stairs, into the street. He was in the road again, walking, to no particular place, for no particular reason, against no clock, the road had no end. He was walking towards the sea, and his father was with him. He fell asleep that way, moving seawards.