by James Hanley
‘What d’you think about this war?’ Mr. Kilkey asked. He always spent a few minutes in conversation whenever he visited his union branch. Yes, what did Mr. Stiggs think about this awful war? Mr. Stiggs looked serious then. Kilkey leaned on the counter, one clenched fist under his ear.
‘No bloody good for any working-man,’ replied Mr. Stiggs. ‘Think it’ll last very long, mate?’
‘Nobody can tell that, can they?’ replied Kilkey. ‘All we do know is that every day thousands of good fellers are being killed. I suppose it’ll go on until those as run it get tired. I think it’s dreadful myself. And come to think on it I must say I’m surprised at the turn of things. I mean all these labour leaders becoming the very opposite of what they’re supposed to be. Ah well, it’s a queer world. You just come to this branch, haven’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Came from Calton. Not much there, I can tell you. A place full of stiffs and snobs. This is the real thing. You feel you are among workers.’
‘Aye. Well, I’m off. Good morning,’ Mr. Kilkey said, and turned towards the door.
‘Morning, mate,’ Mr. Stiggs said, and promptly rolled himself up again, leaned heavily over the desk, appeared to be falling asleep.
The door banged. Mr. Kilkey was gone. Mr. Stiggs was not asleep. In fact his mind was very occupied. He thought of to-morrow’s charabanc trip to Gorley Woods.
‘It’s a caution,’ Kilkey thought. ‘I simply can’t get over that Desmond Fury. Supposed to be a socialist. Makes you want to be sick, really.’
He reached the bottom of the street, and was now standing in the very centre of Gelton. The long lines of shops were opening for the day. The morning sun poured down, and a shaft of light ran from the top of Braham Street right down to the river itself. Kilkey looked down. How nice and fresh it looked down there. How lazily the ferry boats, the tugs and barges passed up and down the river. Hardly think there was a war at all. But when he turned round he saw soldiers passing to and fro, men in hospital-blue, many sailors. Officers rushed this way and that, and indifferent shopkeepers stood outside looking down at the quiet river, whilst the assistants cleaned windows, polished brass, drew down blinds.
Braham Street was a warm street, the shop windows were a riot of colours. The war seemed very far away. It was only the stream of soldiers and sailors and wounded wending their way up and down that told Mr. Kilkey that it was no joke, that war was raging. He looked at one man, then another, one limping, one being wheeled along in a chair. The wounds spelt war for him. He turned and walked away from the river, sauntering slowly along, as though he had not a care in the world, as though he had not worked hard the whole night. Nobody looked at him, and he looked at everybody. It wasn’t often he came to town. Mr. Kilkey liked looking at things: shops, buildings, the traffic, clerks and solicitors, the brokers and cotton men rushing to their offices where the charladies had just put everything neat and tidy for the morning. Kilkey looked at more than one of these women, all kneeling at the steps of buildings, indifferent to the noise about them, the tramp, tramp of thousands of feet. ‘I suppose even those women have husbands and sons at this war.’
When he reached the top of Braham Street he stood waiting for a tram home. Some early shoppers were waiting there too, a soldier and a sailor just come from trench and ship. People glanced at them sympathetically, and they in turn looked at everything, including the sympathetic passers-by, but their thoughts were homing far from war. The tram came along and Mr. Kilkey got on. On the top deck he found a corner seat and sat down. Soldier and sailor followed. The sun shone through the windows, and each time a passenger took his seat a cloud of dust rose in the air. Mr. Kilkey looked out through the window, forgot the war, thought of Maureen and his son. Home to Price Street again. ‘Something tells me the kid isn’t right, somehow.’
Passengers ascended and descended. He hardly noticed them. The passing shops were a blur, his mind was full of wife and son. The tram stopped at Hatfields. He got off and made for Price Street. He recognized faces, the faces recognized him. But he had passed up and down this street so many thousands of times that nobody took the slightest notice of him. The occasional ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ was a habit, a simple muscular movement of the tongue. Mr. Kilkey replied by habit and went on his way.
The neighbours knew all about him. In fact some of them, never too friendly, were now wondering why this ‘big strong feller’ wasn’t doing his bit for King and country. The inhabitants of Price Street who annually honoured the memory of Prince William of Orange took the worst possible view. He was Irish. That was enough for them. ‘Dirty lot of bastards.’ That’s what they were. Stabbing England in the back already. Hadn’t they tried to do the dirty in Ireland? You couldn’t trust them. Some said Mr. Kilkey was a ‘fine strong man,’ but the work he did could well be done by an older man, or even a woman. The really antagonistic, of none too active an imagination, were already saying that Mr. Kilkey might well be connected with those ‘murdering bastards’ in Ireland. It was always those who looked the most innocent, etc. Lately, even to see Joseph Kilkey in his best suit, and leaving the house of an evening, was to assume at once that he was having a rendezvous with a woman. A married man. But what could one expect, anyhow? No doubt at all he must have led his wife a pretty dance. The Irish were like that, anyhow. And so on and so on.
All this had no effect whatever on Joseph Kilkey. He had expected it. The war seemed to have altered everything for the worse, and somehow it looked as though things would never be the same again. Even the ordinary good feelings between neighbours was fast vanishing. What made life worse for him was the sudden pride that Price Street felt in itself. Every house had contributed a soldier or sailor to the war, some had sent two and three. One woman had lost two sons, a third returned and was put into a lunatic asylum. Immediately she draped her front window with the Union Jack, large photographs of her sons, announced on a poster specially printed that she had given three sons for King and country. She was the most honoured woman in the street. She loathed the sight of Joseph Kilkey. Whenever he saw her he hurried on. Inside his home was the best place. But he never returned to it without feeling sad, yet he always hoped Maureen would return. Sometimes he would imagine that wife and son were there all the time, that as soon as he opened his door they would be smiling down at him on the step. The woman next door would chaff him, light-heartedly call him a fool. He would smile. He had been called that any number of times. Perhaps he was.
Now he reached the house and found Mrs. Ditchley already waiting for him. She had made his breakfast, made up his bed, and was on the point of going. ‘Morning, Mrs. Ditchley. Anything happened? Any news.’
‘Morning,’ she said. ‘No,’ she said, brushing the tablecloth with her hand. ‘No.’ What a man! Always expecting news, the same kind of news. A ridiculous man in some ways. Mrs. Ditchley was a realist. She had told him again and again that what he ought to have done was to go after this man and wring his neck, and bring back Maureen by the scruff of her neck. All he did was shake his head.
‘No! If she wants to go, let her go. She’ll learn. She’s young yet.’
‘Well, you are a fool, I must say,’ she remarked. When the child followed his wife Mrs. Ditchley flung up her hands in despair. But she went on looking after him. A good chap in many ways, but a fool just the same.
‘Everything’s set,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Mrs. Ditchley.’
She stood watching him remove coat and cap, sat down whilst he went into the back kitchen to wash. When he came back and sat down to breakfast she got up.
‘I must go now. See you in the evening. Ta-ta.’
‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Morning.’
He finished breakfast and went upstairs to bed. He was soon asleep.
When on day-work he spent some of his evenings in the recreation hall of Saint Sebastian’s. Lately, however, he had not been there at all. He hated the questions. Always the same.
‘Heard
anything of Maureen?’
No. He hadn’t. One time in marrying her, he thought he had married the whole of that family. But to-day he could look across to No. 3 Hatfields and see, strangest thing of all, that empty house. He never passed it without realizing how strange it was that the house should be empty. It had been vacant for months now, and there was no sign that it would be taken again, as though the Fury family had left a kind of dead hand over the place.
‘I can never understand—but what the heck am I talking about? Why, of course. It had to be. That woman simply had to leave. It was impossible for her to live there any longer.’
A whole lifetime in that house and now it was empty. Nor had he seen anything of Mrs. Fury, or the children. Almost as though a cyclone had passed overnight and swept them all away. The woman was often in his mind. It worried him not a little to know that she was in Gelton, yet he could not find her. He had made various attempts. To all intents and purposes she seemed to have hidden herself for good. Even Mrs. Ditchley had tried. Mrs. Fury seemed vanished from the earth. ‘She’ll change just like that,’ he would say, flicking his finger, ‘just like that. She won’t get over that business.’
Sometimes he would sit in the parlour window, looking out at the passers-by. Every young woman looked like his wife, every small boy like his son.
He woke at noon and got up. He washed and shaved and dressed, full of the idea of going for a walk into the near-by Corporation Gardens, but he never went; instead he sat all dressed in the parlour chair, looking out of the window and telling himself again and again that something must have happened. Something was wrong. It was Dermod. He was ill. ‘I’m certain. I’ve had the feeling all last night.’
Not even a fight between two lusty-looking recruits outside disturbed him. Finally he went out the back way and into the gardens. He sat there watching the children playing. Where was she now? What was she doing? Still with that fellow, of course. He got up and circled the gardens three times, then went home again. He felt restless to-day. He’d be glad when it was seven o’clock and he could go off to his work. It broke this restlessness, this feeling of knowing nothing, of hoping nothing, of continuous wondering about his family.
Price Street was long and narrow, the houses like a row of cells, each with its green-painted door, and bright brass knocker. They looked like strings of blazing light under the sun. People sat on the steps of their houses, children played in the road. Women chatted, men smoked pipes, leaned on the walls, talked of old times, followed the course of the war with maps and match-sticks, talked over old battles, old ships, old regiments. They were all old. The gutters were full of rubbish, papers, string, orange-peel, apple-cores. The pavement outside each house was scrubbed white. At one end the street was closed by a high wall, and behind it there rumbled night and day the passenger and goods trains of the railway. At the other end it joined the main King’s Road. This road was made up entirely of shops; the shops gorged, the queues grew longer towards evening. Windows were up, flies buzzed over masses of food, hands picked and pecked and chose, and some less fortunate went away with empty baskets. The traffic roared backwards and forwards sending clouds of dust into the air, and the queues moved slowly forward and bought what was given them of the dust-laden food.
Mrs. Ditchley stood in this queue patiently hoping that a piece of neck of mutton would be available, at the moment the staple food of Joseph Kilkey. The Hatfields district always appeared to get the wrong end of the sheep. Everybody talked of the war. Nobody found time for anything else. Their lives were surrounded by the bright circle of blood. They took all of pride. It was measured by blood. One who smiled and talked to Mrs. Ditchley about the cruel Germans. A buff envelope turned this to stone, and pride took to its dark corner and wept. Some had lost two. But to lose three was the most wonderful of all, and Mrs. Ditchley’s talkative companion described how she had removed the plants from her window and put in their place the photographs of her three sons, suitably draped with the Union Jack, and Price Street was proud. Everybody stopped to look; it was sad, it was beautiful, it was splendid. It shamed, glorified, wept, cursed. It electrified. Three from one house. Amazing. Those who spilt most blood were proudest, the most envied. They were the pillars that took the whole weight of ignorance, the never-emptying vat from which the blood was drawn. And the war went on. Price Street worked, struggled, hoped. Smiled, laughed, sang. They made jokes, became prophets. The street was full of female Napoleons. Forty-one men to the war. Price Street cried this to all other streets. House cried to house: ‘Forty-one men to the war.’
In this atmosphere Joseph Kilkey lived and worked. Wakened one morning about six o’clock by sounds of shrieking next door, he had got dressed and gone below. He had hammered on the door and been let in. A woman beat the table with her fists and the fists cried, and the wood cried that Harry had gone. Mr. Kilkey endeavoured to console the woman. She had no children. He was struck by the appalling news, for he had known the man well. The woman struck him in the back with her fist.
‘Died for the likes of bastards like you,’ she said.
Ever since, this woman had walked past him with bowed head, as though she were ashamed to look him in the face, and now he always crossed to the other side of the street whenever he saw her coming. Price Street was like a barracks. Apart from Kilkey there were only two other able-bodied men in it who still walked about in civilian clothes. Joseph Kilkey felt he no longer belonged, anywhere. He had thought of shifting, but always at the last moment hope made him change his mind. She might yet come home. Everything might yet be all right. Even his few friends had changed; some had already gone to the war, the remaining few appeared anxious for him to go, and Joseph Kilkey knew his job was at stake. Still there was Mrs. Ditchley, ‘a nice, sensible woman.’
She returned from her shopping expedition towards four in the afternoon, discovered Mr. Kilkey going through a pile of letters that were spread out on the table. He looked up as she entered, something seemed to tell him that she had something exciting to say. Now she hurried so fast up the yard that Mr. Kilkey supposed the whole German army might be after her.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve had such a shock.’ She sat down to recover her breath.
Mr. Kilkey relieved her of the shopping-bag. ‘What’s the matter, Mrs. Ditchley?’ he asked.
‘Everything. They’re ransacking that poor Mr. Lazarus’s shop. It’s awful. I was standing in the queue, I was talking to that Mrs. Bolgers who lost her three lads in the war, when we heard the row. It’s simply dreadful. Crowds of people from all over the place. It’s a disgrace. The people are just like cannibals. Just like cannibals. They’ve chased Mr. Lazarus and his missus and family out of the place, and I saw women running off with the food from the shop, besides the others who are dragging the furniture into the street and smashing and burning it up. They say they’re Germans, but I doubt it. Why, I believe he sent a son to the war in the British army. Course you hear nothing else but rumours these days!’
She paused again for breath. Meanwhile Mr. Kilkey was putting the morning’s shopping on the table, calculating the cost under his breath.
‘And the police!’ burst in the woman. ‘Why, I never saw anything like it! Never. Just standing there watching. They say they’re afraid of the people, though I doubt it. I never knew a Gelton policeman who was afraid of anything. They just don’t want to interfere.’
‘Perhaps it even amuses them,’ remarked Mr. Kilkey. ‘Now you come along,’ he said. ‘You get back to your place, Mrs. Ditchley, and have a lie down. It’s upset you, I can see. But I do believe it’s this big ship just being sunk that’s caused that flare-up. It was the same thing when the Media got sunk. Come on now.’ He led the trembling and excited woman down the yard and saw her into her own kitchen.
‘D’you think this awful war will last very long, Mr. Kilkey?’ she asked.
‘Heaven alone knows that. One time I used to hear people spouting about how the working men could stop the w
ar if they wanted to, but it doesn’t look much like it to me. No, Mrs., this war’ll stop when the big fellers say it will. Not before. And the worst of it is that even women are fighting in it, so they say. I’m quite certain that all these soldier lads want is to be back in their old jobs.’
‘Oh! And there’s this,’ Mrs. Ditchley said. ‘Somebody in the queue gave it to me; who I couldn’t say, never seen the person before. A note. Here.’
‘Thanks. Now you take it easy a bit,’ and then he went off, squeezing the note in his hand. He read it going up the yard.
17 HEY’S ALLEY.
DEAR JOE,
Could you manage to come down here and see me this evening? Fanny’s in hospital and her condition is worse so they say. I feel too dead beat to drag all the way up to Hatfields, and in any case I’m rather ashamed of being seen anywhere round that neighbourhood now. Do come if you can.
DENNIS FURY.
Mr. Kilkey squeezed the note into a tiny ball, rubbed it between his fingers. Then he hurried up the yard. A few minutes later he came out, putting coat and cap on as he ran. In the entry he stopped, looked up and down, then ran again.
‘Saw it coming,’ he said to himself. ‘Saw this coming.’
He turned the corner, bumped into a man making a convenience of the entry. Hey’s Alley. So that was where they lived. And Fanny was in hospital. Well! Well! ‘Good Lord,’ he exclaimed. ‘But I could see it coming.’
Yes, he saw it coming. ‘Hey’s Alley. Never heard of the place. New one on me. So that woman’s on her back at last. Knew it! Knew it! Saw it coming.’
He reached the street, slowed down until he was clear of it, and in the King’s Road began to run again.
‘Five o’clock—nine o’clock. Five o’clock—nine o’clock,’ he was saying to himself as he ran. ‘Might manage it. Doesn’t say where, which place she’s in, either. Just do it, I reckon. In hospital. Knew it. Knew it. Saw it coming.’
He caught the first tram going south. ‘Where’s Hey’s Alley?’ he asked the conductor.