by James Hanley
2
Mr Mangan could see Peter as clearly as he could see the window through which he stared. But he never thought of the boy. His thoughts were very far away now. Each day he had stared so, each day he had thought. It was as though his mind were imprisoned by clay: that with each throb of thought, which had to be dug out with pain and labour, the clay gradually crumbled away. And as the clay crumbled, so the light slowly filtered in. He was like a man working at a great bank, under which is hidden something he has long lost, and has suddenly remembered. So Mr Mangan’s mind worked slowly, and as the world of the past slowly took shape, took the breath of life, the warmth of blood and flesh, so the world of the present slowly descended lower and lower. Peter watched his eyes. ‘How bright they are!’ he thought. ‘Like a cat’s when the darkness comes.’ He could see into his grandfather’s mouth. He heard his slow breathing. Suddenly he exclaimed, ‘Grand-dad!’ but Mr Mangan was seventy years away in the flesh, breathing his youth, leaving behind him in the high-backed chair a crumpled heap from which life had fled, something that had finished its journey-work, a small, yellowish face, the years clearly traced in its many lines and wrinkles, the huge and helpless hands, the dangling legs. Once he coughed, and Peter drew his chair back to escape the expectoration that came from his mouth. He took the old man’s big handkerchief from the arm of the chair and wiped his mouth. The mouth moved in a most peculiar way, as though expressing a thanks of its own. Peter got up. He stood with his back to the fire watching the slow movement of Mr Mangan’s right hand. He stared down at his big skull. ‘How old he is!’ he said, half aloud. ‘No wonder Mother is fed up. And Dad too. Having to take him down there every Friday slobbering like he does.’ He laughed. Could his grandfather hear him? Mr Mangan’s eyes seemed to change from white fire to red. In the darkness they appeared to have assumed a liquidity, and Peter imagined them to be two little pools of red water.
Anthony Mangan was sitting by his father in the doorway of their stone cottage. His father was telling him that it were best for him to be up and off out of it, because he remembered that his wife had died on the roadside, and it were best, he went on, that Anthony should get up and go away. Right out of the country. Anthony was crying and saying he could not go. He could not leave his mother, even though she were dead and now lying on that deal table in the little front room. His father stroked his head, hearkening to him, saying there was nothing else to do. Above their heads they could see the hot July sun. He watched his father wipe the sweat from his forehead. A great weariness seemed to come upon him as he sat there, outside the house he had built with his own strong hands. ‘You must up and go because times are bad now and it is not right that a strong healthy boy should sit around here where there is nothing to see, nor do, and what can I do? Bury your good mother as is right and just. No more.’
A drop fell from Mr Mangan’s eye, but Peter did not see it. He was busy poking the fire. The kitchen was now in complete darkness excepting for the sort of mad light that danced on the opposite wall as the fire took hold and the flames roared up the chimney. He stood listening to the tick of the clock. Soon his father would be home from work. He would tell him about everything that had happened. Yes. He would tell him everything. Even about Hanrahan, and Brother Twomey. His dad was kind. He had said, ‘Well, it happens and that’s all. Now you best get settled down and help here a bit.’ Mr Mangan dribbled again, the white slobber hanging to his lower lip. ‘Grand-dad!’ Peter said with disgust, knowing the old man did not hear, did not care. He breathed slowly, heavily, like a horse.
‘What can one do now, Anthony? Nothing. Look at me.’ And he had looked into his father’s eyes. The eyes of an honest man. They were blue and as clear as spring water. His father had a wart under his nose. ‘I want to see my mother,’ he said to his father. They got up and entered the house. Anthony, seeing his mother, cried, and his father thought, ‘There! There lies the work of good men.’ He laughed then, so that Anthony turned round, tears running down his cheeks. His mother lay between the sheets, like a wraith, her sunken cheek-bones made her look as though she were grinning at him. Anthony touched her face with his tiny hand. Touching it, he felt its coldness, and it seemed to him as though that face had never been, had never existed within his memory. He could not remember. And his father said. ‘That’s how it was. You were away with Kelty in his boat. You remember. That’s how it was. And your good mother picked off that white road.’ Anthony looked at his mother, then slowly he turned his head and said to his father, ‘Was Mother taken ill that suddenly?’ His father did not answer, but was thinking in his quiet mind. ‘Yes. Taken ill like so many others with an illness that only evil blew out from its stinking nostrils. Your mother starved,’ he said. ‘We all starve. You up and away from here, my good son.’
The old man leaned forward in his chair, his mouth was wide open. ‘Ah! Ah!’ The sounds came from the back of his throat, and Peter stared at him. Then above there was a knocking upon the floor. He ran into the lobby and called up, ‘Calling, Mother?’ ‘The post,’ Mrs Fury cried. Peter went along the lobby. There was a letter lying there. He saw the American stamp, and the postmark – New York. He ran upstairs and dashed into his mother’s room.
‘A letter from New York,’ he said. The draught swung the door to.
Mr Mangan slowly moved his right hand until it reached the edge of the arm of the chair. It slid off, falling heavily on to his knees.
‘But leave my mother now, Father?’ he said. ‘How can I go? I love her.’ He felt his father’s strong hand upon the back of his neck. He was stroking the back of his head. He thought, looking at the still face, ‘His hand is strong and warm.’ The room was cold. It seemed as though life could not hold under that roof now. No place for either of them. ‘You’re shivering, Anthony,’ his father said. They went into the kitchen. They sat down, watching the turf smoke curl up the chimney. Anthony was thinking. He could still see in his mind’s eye the sunken jaws of his mother, as though she were grinning at him, as though she were saying behind her silence, behind her cold, ice-like frigidity, ‘I am out of it. You are not. You are still tied to things.’ As though behind that empty face some spark of life had yet remained, lying hidden, so that at the moment of his looking it had sprung forth, tracing that cool dead face into that of a grinning monkey. He could not shut out from his mind those sunken jaws. They seemed to mock him, mock his father. As if his mother had died still retaining some essence of her living spirit, harbouring it, so that when they looked down upon her and thinking her dead they were disarmed, and then it confronted them, seizing them in their loneliness, in their bitterness of soul. Anthony was certain his mother’s jaws had slightly trembled even as he watched her. His father tapped his knee. ‘I know it’s hard,’ he said. ‘But it’s the end. You pack your things and go. It is not fair. To your dead mother or to me.’ He gripped his father’s hands. ‘And the rest of your life a barren wilderness. Think, Father, I am your son and I love you.’ He was certain he heard his father sob of a sudden, though it may have been the rising wind outside.
Peter came downstairs. He went up to the mantelpiece to get a match. He lit the gas. As he turned round to look at his grandfather he was certain that the old man’s face shuddered, like a leaf suddenly disturbed after long lying in the road, shuddered and seemed to change colour. ‘Perhaps I only fancy it, though,’ Peter thought. ‘It’s the light, that’s what it is.’ A quarter after five. His father would be here any minute now. Where was Aunt Brigid? If only she were here. He liked the house best when Aunt Brigid was there. He did not feel so embarrassed, so conscious of the secret shame which he could not efface from his mind. It lay there like a festering sore. He began to lay the table afresh for the evening meal, passing to and from the back kitchen with cloth and plates and knives and forks, making a great noise as he placed these on the table. There was no sound in the kitchen save the heavy breathing of his grandfather. ‘Still staring,’ he said, and rushed to the window. He pulled th
e blind down savagely, so that it tore at the side. ‘Stop staring, you old fool!’ he was crying in his mind. ‘Now you can’t stare any more.’ The old man did not move.
‘In the morning,’ his father was saying. ‘The roads are clear, the roads are good. Just after the rising. You can go on until you get to Heggerty’s place, then stop for a while, but not too long. Our people are such a kind that they hate us to outstay our welcome. Make for Cromarstown, for well beyond it things are a little better than in these parts. Perhaps if you keep up your spirit and walk long enough you’ll get sight of Cork city one fine morning. Keep a letter always in the box for me, my son. I think you’d best go tomorrow. Now it’s late. Bed-time. You get some supper and go on up to your room.’ Anthony got up from his chair, saying, ‘Not hungry, Dad.’ He remembered how his father had laughed, ‘for it’s the first time I ever heard anybody say they weren’t hungry for many a bright day.’ Anthony stood by the kitchen door, watching his father as he poked at the peat in the fire. His shoulder outraged the white wall against which he leaned, for it was milk-white. ‘Lean off that wall.’ his father said angrily. He went to bed, but he did not sleep. For hours he sat looking out of the window, feeling the wind upon his face, his mind far away, his eyes down in that room, staring into his mother’s face. ‘I can’t go,’ he said, ‘I can’t go,’ and was seized by a sudden longing that swept upon him like a flood. He ran down to his father.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please, I can’t go. Let me stay here. My mother … I …’ How his father changed! He stood up and caught him under his chin, slowly raising his face. ‘Look at me! Are you my son? Is this the first time I have asked? Are you the only one? Or are there not many hundreds like you, their parents dead, their parents wounded, flung out on the roads like dogs? Must I tell you that you must go? As you love the mother in that room, I ask you, I beg you to go. You are young and strong. I am old. You have your whole life before you. Why stay? But remember this – remember it to your dying day. Your mother. Imprint it upon your mind, so that nothing shall ever wipe it out, your mother on that road, that white road. Dead, from hunger.’ His voice rose to a high pitch. ‘Oh Jesus Christ! From hunger.’ Anthony knelt down and clutched his father’s legs, crying, ‘Father, Father! Is that it? Is that Mother’s illness? Oh, Father!’
Peter ran from the back kitchen. He had heard a peculiar sound. ‘Grandfather! Grand-dad!’ Anthony Mangan was crying. It was the first time that Peter had ever seen him cry. What had he suddenly remembered? But could he remember? Could he even think? That old man with the idiotic face, the staring eyes that seemed to him like little balls of fire. ‘Grand-dad! Grand-dad!’ He clutched the old man by his arms, crying in his mind, ‘I must tell Mother, I must tell Mother. Oh, Grand-dad!’ He pulled out his own clean white handkerchief. He wiped Mr Mangan’s face. ‘Grand-dad!’ he said again; but Mr Mangan evinced no sign, he did not stir. It was as if his mind hung, perilously suspended over the twin abysses of past and present, the one fighting against the other, all that represented his past seeking to tear away all that personified the present, from that high-backed chair, that prison in which he sat. ‘Grand-dad!’ ‘I wonder if he is ill again,’ Peter was thinking, for the old man was sweating …
‘Hunger. Co to bed, Anthony,’ his father commanded. His manner had changed. He had become stern. ‘I’ll call you just at daybreak tomorrow. Father Manion will look to you, him as will put your mother into the earth. Remember, Anthony, remember what sends you out, what leaves me alone, what puts your mother into the earth. Never forget it.’
‘No, Father. No, Father. Good-night.’
The sun was riding high when he woke. Not a breath of wind. From his window he could see right across the rolling green plain that led to somewhere he had never known, would never know, for his direction would be direct south. His father was up before him, now stirring the oats in the black swinging pan. Anthony shivered as he went down the bare wooden stairs and so into the little room to steal a glance at his mother. He could hear a sort of low murmur in the kitchen now, it sounded to him like music, but music he had never heard before. His father was saying his morning prayers as he stirred the pot. Anthony drew away the sheet from his mother’s face and looked at her. With her he had played, had said his morning and night prayers, with her he had wandered in the lanes on the warm summer evenings, in the cold afternoons of autumn and winter, sticking, and hunting for eggs whilst his mother broke the wood across her knee. With her he had walked with heavy sack and basket that often threatened to defeat his weak frame. Then his father would meet them on the road and take the sack on to his own back. With her he had eaten at table, taken milk and potatoes. ‘Mother!’ he said, ‘Mother!’ His father was behind him, a hand in the air; trembling, it gripped him. He was rushed into the kitchen. ‘Father,’ he said, and looked at him as they sat across the bench by the window. Why did his father seem in such a hurry to get him away? Why had he such impatience, when he wished to look upon his mother’s face for the last time? ‘Eat now,’ his father said. Anthony ate his porridge. They went and stood by the door. ‘Your things,’ his father said. ‘Yes, Father!’ He could not hold back his tears as he ran upstairs. He put on his heavy coat and woollen cap, and slung the black canvas bag over his shoulder. They stood looking at each other, the father saying, ‘God take care of you now. Anthony,’ but Anthony did not seem to hear the words, he was looking through and beyond his father at the cold dead face of his mother. There was something urgent and compelling in his glance, his eyes lighted up with a sort of frenzy.
‘Mother! Mother!’
‘Come.’ his father said. They went into the room for the last time.
Anthony bent down and kissed the still mouth. He could feel his father’s impatient hand upon his shoulder. He turned away, brushing his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. ‘I’ll walk with you a little way,’ his father was saying into his ear. They left the house. As he stepped outside the door, Anthony was conscious of a change so sudden and so violent that he looked up with a pained expression into his father’s face. He turned round and stood staring at the house. This thing about which his father talked, this thing that licked the land like a ravenous wolf. What did it mean? His eyes wandered up and down the white wall of the stone cottage. One took oneself away, he was thinking. His father said, ‘Come now.’ They walked slowly away. When one left one’s home, one took with one breath and spirit, all the life that had spread itself about the house in years, one gathered it up, memories, faces, impressions, gestures, one gathered them up like one gathered one’s clothes into a bag. They reached the top of the lane. The long white road was dusty. ‘Here’s the road,’ his father said, with an expression almost amounting to horror upon his face as his eyes looked right and left. ‘The road,’ he said, and Anthony knew he was thinking of his mother, and how he had found her lying on that road, quite still, quite peaceful. ‘And multiply it by ten thousand thousand,’ his father shouted with great rage, as though some sort of poison lurked beneath its white surface. ‘You take this way,’ his father said. ‘Yes, Father!’ He held back. The road held him, his two feet seemed to cling, leech-like, to the stones. His head was turned south, his body inclined a little so that his father could see his bag well secured upon his shoulder. But his feet refused to move. They seemed endowed with a life of their own, separate from his living body. His father held out his two hands. Anthony gripped them. ‘Good-bye.’ He turned away. His father did not move. He walked on. Then he turned round. He shaded his eyes from the hot sun and looked back up the road. His father was still standing there. He put his two hands to his mouth, cupped them, and shouted, ‘Good-bye, Father.’ The other waved his hand. He was soon swallowed up in clouds of dust. He turned again. The figure had vanished. His father had gone into the house again. He went on. By a great open ditch he suddenly stopped, saying, ‘Oh! Oh!’
‘Grand-dad!’ Peter said. The old man was sitting bolt upright. The expression upon his face changed again. Peter,
looking at him, wondered why he had said ‘Oh!’ Mr Mangan’s body began to resume with a painful gradualness its former position, shoulders bent, head low upon them, and a little to one side. Peter put his right arm back on to the arm of the chair. Mr Mangan, after that slow and painful excursion into the past, closed his eyes and sighed. Anthony Mangan had become ‘him’ once more. ‘Him’ that slobbered and suffered his helpless person to be carried from his bed to the kitchen, to be part carried and part dragged to the little Post Office at the bottom of Hatfields, so that his daughter, ‘a splendid woman’, might receive his pittance in order to further entrench against the hazards of the economic tides. Peter, after making him comfortable, wiped the sweat from his forehead.
3
Mrs Fury had fallen asleep, and her last thought had been ‘I wonder where Brigid could have got to?’ She had an idea that her sister would call on Maureen, and was sure she would visit the ‘other pair’. What a fool she had been ever to say a word about Desmond! Then she reflected. No. Perhaps she had carried secrecy too far. She had not yet forgotten her sister’s caustic remarks about her silence and her own complete ignorance of Peter’s being in Cork, and within a stone’s throw of her own house. No, this silence, this secrecy had taken its due toll. Then she fell asleep, utterly weary. She did not wake again until her husband came back from work. Mr Fury went straight upstairs, without changing. He sat down by the bed in his oil-smeared clothes.
‘How are you, Fanny?’ he asked.
The woman sat up in the bed. ‘Oh! I’m all right!’ she said. ‘I’ll be up tomorrow. Dr Dunfrey said I could get up tomorrow.’
‘That soon? What was wrong?’ he asked her.
She noticed the puzzled look he wore.
‘Sometimes one takes to bed just to get a little peace,’ she said.