by James Hanley
He wanted to make his mother an allowance of ten shillings a week, and he wanted this done through the ‘kindness’ of Mr. Trears. But why couldn’t the man send the money himself? He knew his origin, or perhaps his position wouldn’t allow him seeing ‘a poor old woman’ who had done harm to nobody but herself. He could see her now, this tall, gaunt, soldierly-looking creature, standing outside his office door. Standing there in her long serge coat, and her black straw hat—he might say a battered straw hat—and her down-at-heel shoes, standing looking at him as though he, Mr. Laurence Trears, were God—or the sun—and saying: ‘Can’t you, sir? Can’t you?’ and looking at him with her bold eyes, and he having nothing to say beyond: ‘Impossible, Mrs. Fury.’ He knew her, knew her well. Saw her home—heard her story—learned of her family.
Just a simple hard-working woman. Just short of money, just short of opportunities. That was all. He knew she had gone away to hide. He understood her shame, her pride in her son gone. But he couldn’t help. Couldn’t raise a finger of effort. No. He could do nothing, who would like to do everything. But this thing he would not do. What he called ‘this magnificent effort’ must be returned to Captain Fury the same day. He was surprised to be asked to undertake such a commission. Such transactions he must say were no part of his business, ending: ‘You might with advantage go down to your mother and hand her the lump sum. She would be well worth it.’
That was that! There it lay, the ‘magnificent effort,’ simply ashes in the fire. Damn Mr. Trears! Blast Mr. Trears! Writing him a letter like that. One might suppose he wanted to commission the man to murder or poison. Telling me what I ought to do. Blast these people. Why were they always correcting him, checking him, telling him what they thought he should do? They seemed to like doing it. Even his wife was not above such a thing, in spite of that largeness of mind upon which she prided herself.
To have thanked Desmond for ‘this magnificent effort’ was something Mr. Trears could not do. At least he could not say ‘magnificent.’ That would get too near the bone. To tell an army captain, and to keep on reminding an army captain of his beginnings would be the last thing to venture. Mr. Trears had more sense than that. He hadn’t liked the man when he met him. He could hardly believe he was the son of the woman whose youngest he had defended, and only by a miracle saved from the rope. Mr. Trears forthwith instructed his clerk to write to Captain Fury. He would not sign the letter. Mr. Potts, the clerk, could always deal with minor matters.
This refusal upset Desmond Fury, as Mr. Laurence Trears knew it would. Well, to hell with Trears. He’d find somebody else. Give her the whole sum. H’m, she wouldn’t drink it, of course! No! But worse horror she might even be generous with it. Give it to the Church. That would be too bad.
Alice bringing in tea disturbed him. He went off into another room, hung about there waiting for Sheila to say:
‘Tea, Des.’ He liked that. Liked hearing her call him ‘Des.’
When at length she did call, and he went in, he showed not the slightest sign of the effect which the solicitor’s letter had had upon him. Between Trears and Tinks he’d had a day. Still, he had made up his mind on one thing. He would see his father. And three times during tea he mentioned this—as though he were determined on planting it in Sheila’s head. She might even say once again: ‘Don’t go.’
‘You know, Des darling, we ought to make more friends in London. Don’t you think so?’
‘Expect we ought to,’ he said, then stuffed his mouth with bun loaf. ‘The right kind, of course. The very opposite of these people we know here. God! They make me sick with their little dignities and their superior airs, and their bloody politeness over things—well, you know.…’
‘Even trifles count,’ she said, countering his ebullience, the kind she didn’t like in him. He laughed. It amused him!
‘Not those kind of silly trifles,’ he said.
‘I hope you find your father well,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I feel I would have loved to have known your parents. Do you think that very funny?’
‘No! Not at all! All the same, you can’t now. So that doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘No, of course not!’
It didn’t! So there was the end of that question.
She drank more tea. ‘D’you think they might have liked me, Des?’ she asked. ‘Really, honestly?’
He smiled down at her. How indefatigable she was! Perhaps it was the tea. ‘Oh, I don’t know! You met one and that was enough for me.’
‘Desmond!’
‘Of course! Yes, I understand! But you began these silly bloody arguments yourself. I never mentioned them, did I? Did I?’ His voice rose.
‘Oh, all right! All right,’ she said, ‘we won’t discuss them. They might be some rare and precious metal, so holy a substance, too holy to be discussed. Your extreme sensitiveness does you no credit—it reveals the worst side of your character. You keep asking me if I love you! Sometimes I find it hard.’
His mind registered a lightning thought. ‘This is dangerous ground.’ Yes it was. One of these days Peter would come back into this and then—he didn’t want to think about it. Why was she so nasty to-day? Had something happened?
And as he climbed the stairs his eyes were full of her body’s shape. Perhaps that was all he did like! Her body’s shape! She was beautiful. He had no sooner got into his room than he began to change. And whilst he shaved and admired his face in the glass, she was behind him.
When she smiled he arched his brows. He was for the moment indifferent. He was a little fed up with to-day. And he cried to himself: ‘Days. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Get me out of this bloody stink-hole!’ Carried away by the thought he uttered the word aloud: ‘Stink-hole,’ forgetting for the moment that she was standing behind him and smiling, and apparently enjoying the knowledge of this irritating substance that would persist in getting under his skin.
‘Des, I shall be here when you come home.’
‘Yes, all right, Sheila!’ He said this with disconcerting absent-mindedness.
‘I’ll be waiting for you.’
‘I know, darling.’ He went on shaving. Suddenly he turned and looked at her. ‘You are very lovely,’ he said. ‘You understand I am jealous; must be. Will be.’
He ran a hand across his throat. ‘Must be. Will be.’ Laughing, he said he used to do that sort of thing when he was a boy.
‘Did you, darling! How wonderful! I’ll be here waiting for you,’ she repeated.
He finished shaving. She sat on the bed watching him complete his dressing. She always enjoyed this. She was fascinated by his height, his breadth, his arms, his muscles, his legs, his big head. These were times when like some virgin youth her husband blushed. Then a wave of feeling overcame her and she would bury his head on her breast.
‘All this to see dad?’
‘All this to see dad,’ he said.
‘I hope everything is all right. I’m so sorry to hear about your mother.’
His whole attitude changed. He said quite surlily, ‘Are you?’ but he was only thinking of Mr. Trears. Later this gentleman vanished in a cloud of sheer rapture, the rapture that swept him when, as he was leaving the room, he kissed his wife, saying: ‘Bye-bye, Sheila—won’t be long,’ and then her dress had fallen apart.
‘I was just going to bath,’ she said.
Was she? He caught her hands, stood away and looked at her. ‘God!’ he said. ‘You’re great! I do love you.’
Then he was gone, gone on this rapturous wave that floated him down the stairs and along the whole of the Manor Park Road. He wanted to shout: ‘Happy! Happy!’
Who wouldn’t be! It was great being alive. Going away. Coming home to her! He carried the aura of her with him wherever he went. He was happy. She was wonderful. He glowed with this happiness. He did not think of another, only a youth, who had glowed of the same happiness, and who had dreamed of going home to her. No! He rotted somewhere in another world altogether. One didn’t think of that. That was anoth
er matter altogether. Life here was good. And he was still climbing. Going on and on and up and up. And she was behind him, beside him, in front of him. She was all about him, fluttering, singing, a sort of lovely bird. Who couldn’t be happy? At the end of the road he caught a taxi and asked to be driven to town.
He knew he was on his way to see his father! But so far it hadn’t occurred to him to find out where he was living. Still, he could find out. Patience. When he paid the taxi he went and rang up the hospital. After much stammering and shouting over the wire—the people at the other end imagined some sort of Colossus was speaking to them—they managed to grasp two facts. He was the son of a Mrs. Fury, patient at the hospital, and he wanted her last known address. But it wasn’t customary to supply addresses at random over the’phone. More shouting. At length he got the address.
Seventeen Hey’s Alley. Hey’s Alley—where the devil was that? He hailed another taxi. Directed the man to drive direct to No.17 Hey’s Alley. Then he got in, sat down, banged the door. The clock began to tick. A thin purplish face, with a drooping black moustache, was turned towards him. The driver was speaking: ‘Where’s that, sir?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Afraid I don’t, sir! Never even heard of the blinking place.’
‘Oh!’ Where the devil was it? Must be some queer hole or other. ‘You ought to bloody well know,’ he barked at the driver, who spat through his window into the street.
‘Well, I don’t bloody well know. However, I’ll find out.’
The car started. Yes. He would find it. The bloody old fool would drive him all the way round Gelton he supposed. He sat back in the seat. It was quite dark. The cab turned corners—pulled up, started again. The brakes screeched, the wheel was turned frantically. It careered on through pools of light, then darkness. It stopped again. The driver questioned a man. What was said Captain Fury could not hear. Damn this business! The bloody setbacks he’d had to-day. And her teasing hadn’t improved his opinion of the world. However, to-morrow might be different. The cab rattled on. It seemed that at last the man was bent on taking Captain Fury to his destination.
The arrival caused a commotion. It was a rare occasion when a taxicab arrived in Hey’s Alley. Desmond stared at the crowd of children who quickly surrounded it, when it pulled up at No. 17.
‘Ooh! Ah! It’s a gentleman. It’s a soldier. Ooh!’ and the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ eventually brought others to their doors. The inhabitants of Hey’s Alley leaned against their doors, folded their arms and watched.
Finally Captain Fury climbed out. He told the driver to call back for him in exactly one hour. ‘And don’t forget, will you?’
‘No, sir.’
That was reassuring, anyhow. The taxicab drove off through clouds of smoke. Desmond hardly glanced at Hey’s Alley or its inhabitants. He knocked at the door. It was opened by his father.
‘Oh! It’s you, is it?’
‘Yes. It looks like me.’
‘Better come in.’
The man drew back, Captain Fury entered. Then the door closed. And with it all the other doors in the Alley. Hey’s Alley for the moment had gone to sleep. A captain. An army captain. They closed their doors, but there was wonder upon their faces. The Captain was not a man at all. Simply a phenomenon.
CHAPTER IV
I
‘How is mother? Have you seen her lately? What do the hospital people think about her, Dad?’
‘She’s as bad as anybody could be. Yes, I saw her. I don’t know what the hospital thinks.’
‘I’m really sorry about this. Where is Maureen these days?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you seen Joe Kilkey?’
‘No. I haven’t seen Joe Kilkey either. Besides, I never think of Joe Kilkey or her either.’
‘Are you still on the same ship, Dad?’
‘No. I’m on a new one, worse luck. Might as well be in the bloody Navy! Same thing.’
‘When are you sailing?’
‘Quite soon.’
‘I suppose mother will come back here when she gets better. I’ll go and see her to-morrow.’
‘I don’t know what your mother’ll do. No use asking me. I never did know what she’d be doing from one day’s end to another day’s end. But I know she is very ill and if she gets over it it’ll be through God’s goodness. I’ve never seen such a faithful woman in all the days I’ve been living. Aye! I’m proud of her.’
Desmond Fury looked round the room, and then he saw the little altar made up on the dresser. He smiled seeing it. It was like a triumphant flag, always at the masthead, always blowing in the breeze. He would have felt disappointed had it not been there. Then he looked at his father, who ever since he had come in had sat in the same position. Feet on the fender, hands crossed on his knees, head tilted as though all this time he had been staring up at the alarm clock on the mantelpiece. He carried on conversation in this way. Not once had he turned his head to look at the visitor. Nothing could have made Captain Fury more uncomfortable.
The room was strange, his father strange, everything was strange. Hatfields was home. Why didn’t he get up off that chair, take one opposite his father? Like he did in the old days at Hatfields. No! The times had changed. He was a visitor, and judging by his father’s terseness not even a welcome one. On the other hand he had not expected to be embraced and feted. This would only have embarrassed him. He kept his eyes on the back of Mr. Fury’s head. There was something sad in sitting here, looking at his father in that way. The fire was nearly out, the hearth was littered with breadcrumbs, bones, egg-shells, the piled ashes remained; the table unswept, caps and vests hanging on the cupboard door. Looking at these things he could not but think of No.3 Hatfields, all polished and shining, a huge fire burning in the grate, through all seasons, an everlasting fire. And the grate shining. Yes. It was all changed.
His father looked terribly old, neglected. He had never seen him like that before. It seemed to increase his discomfiture. But worst of all, yes hardest of all, his father didn’t seem interested any more. Perhaps his ‘What’s all that bloody tommy-rot?’ summed up the whole situation perfectly.
All tommy-rot! He had taken care to bring with him a bottle of brandy, and this lay in his pocket wrapped in brown paper. Continuously his fingers played about the bottle neck. He wanted to take it out, give it to his father. His feelings made him want to revel in a sheer orgy of giving. But he never pulled out the bottle. He sat there, disconsolate, conscious of a frustration, of a feeling that nothing could ever be right again. No. His father was through with him. Mr. Fury began filling his pipe. Quite casually he asked a question.
Where was he living? How was his missus? And Desmond’s heart leapt. It almost seemed as though some warmth were stealing in from somewhere, a warmth rising. Feverishly whilst the answer was on his lips his fingers gripped the bottle neck. A little more warmth and out would come that bottle.
‘I’m living up in the south end of the city; Mrs. Fury is quite well, thanks.’
What a reply! How stiff. Not Sheila, but Mrs. Fury, and she was well.
Mr. Fury was silent again. Desmond wondered what time it was. He kept thinking of his wife. Now he wanted to go home. To Sheila! That was what being married to her meant. Every minute, every single second for her. It must be that way. This made him begin fidgeting about in his chair. Then to his great surprise Mr. Fury stood up, turned round and looked at his son. He stood in the middle of the coco-nut mat, shirt-sleeves undone, hands behind his back. He wore a pair of shiny serge trousers, a vest and a blue print shirt. This was open at the neck. Desmond thought he must be feeling cold. When his father looked right at him he lowered his eyes, squinted at his Sam Browne belt, had another look at his highly polished boots.
Mr. Fury spoke. He spoke in a tired voice. He was at the moment a man who didn’t care very much about anything.
‘It doesn’t impress me, lad,’ he said.
What didn’t impress him, wondere
d Desmond? His coming? His six foot two of strong Fury, or that dazzling spick-and-span uniform. That rise in the world, that came from the golden rules: Push—climb! He didn’t know.
‘In a way I wish you hadn’t come, Desmond,’ went on Mr. Fury. ‘Might as well be frank with you. Always have been a frank man. You know that. I’m still on the same old job, still shovelling in the ship—all the same I know what’s decent and what isn’t! You were a good lad once. I remember, and you remember when your mother carried on like she did I took your side. I understand much more than any of my children think. Your mother had shortcomings. I had meself. Damn! It would be like drinking flat ale if we were all perfect. Well then, you dressed up and all that—but it doesn’t impress me, lad. I admire your push and go. You were always a thruster. But I don’t know why you came to see me now. I wouldn’t begrudge saying it was nice of you. But sometimes it can be too late to be nice. Nothing you said about me would make a bit of difference—I always told your mother, ‘Don’t depend on children.’ She did. Look where she is. Mind you, I’ve been a foolish man. Your mother was too good for me. Should never have married me. I held her back because I’m just a harum-scarum fellow—always have been. Well, your mother is ill, and I expect you to go and see her. But don’t go saying I told you to go. You must do things as you want to. You’re no kid. I’ll be quite satisfied so long as you see her. She’s not a young woman now, you know. Anything could happen. Understand! There, that’s all.’
Yes, that was all, his silence proclaimed as he rose up and down on his heels and looked his son up and down. All he would say to him. But there was something else and it was his own secret. He looked at his eldest son, only thirty-one years old. Tall, strong, full of push and go. Ambitious as the devil. But that was the mother, of course. Had this person ever really worked? Of course. But he didn’t look like a working man any more. Yes, he held this pride, he was proud of his height and breadth and power and bearing and his push. He had all of what he himself lacked, all what his wife had forced on to him, out of her very blood. She had driven the lot of them. And here was one result. All the same he wished he would go. And suddenly he sat down again.