by James Hanley
“I don’t want to know,” Peter said, half rising, “don’t tell me.”
“Have some more tea, my dear,” Miss Kerrigan said.
“I suppose there must have been one mean man in an old coat and the devil’s cap, that hadn’t been able to pull his gun from a dark pocket. If he put all the wrongs of this land behind the bullets he fired at shadows that morning, and I suppose he must have thought they were the others, it was the devil himself that pulled the trigger, and sent bullets flying everywhere, and when your poor mother just slipped off the bench, your father couldn’t move an inch, and never a word out of him that morning, never, and never was after that again. Her heart just gave out when she heard the noise of the guns they was firin’. God help us it was terrible, and on such a beautiful mornin’.”
Miss Kerrigan seemed oblivious of the man’s presence. Calmly she began stirring her tea. She saw the hands of her visitor gripping the edge of her tablecloth, and she let him be. She had suddenly forgotten what she had told him. She might just as well have been discussing the weather. She sipped her tea, and was very silent.
“More tea, sir?” she said, as though she suddenly realized there was a man before her.
“No—no—no thank you.” Peter Fury was already on his feet.
“If you ever find yourself in these parts again, young man,” said Miss Kerrigan, who, pushing away her cup had also risen, “then do call in and see us, won’t you, for we like to see a young face sometimes. And I’ll tell your aunt you called, my dear. Maybe the words I speak will have to travel a long way before they reach her, but no matter, I’ll tell her all about you, and say you may be comin’ again. And now I must be away, and so must you, for I’ve things to be doin’, and maybe you have also. So I’ll bid you good-day, young man, and God bless you.”
Peter made no reply. He seemed quite ignorant of her movement, unaware that she had left the table, and was already standing by the door, waiting for him to follow.
He gave no sign, but remained motionless, his head turned upwards. Miss Kerrigan had already begun to clear the table. As she did so she became aware of a strange thing. The corners of her beautiful white tablecloth were now crushed in the biggest pair of hands she had ever seen. She removed the cups, the plates, the pot.
“I’ll be away to your aunt now, sir,” she said, and left him, and the crushed cloth, and the silent room. She went out so quietly that it seemed she had passed clean through the door like a wraith. Peter sat on, still holding on to the cloth, still looking upwards, and thought nothing, and felt nothing. He remained motionless. The light from the fire threw his shadow clear upon the opposite wall, but Miss Kerrigan, now joined in her whispered chatter with Miss Mangan, would never have recognised it, who had seen so many shadows in her time.
When she returned to the room it was not to see her visitor, nor to ask him if he would like just another cup of tea before he departed. She had forgotten some knitting left on a chair. The room was empty and the man was gone, the cloth ends piled and rumpled where he had let them fall, and she at once started to straighten it out. She did not miss the man; she had long since forgotten him.
4
The bed was warm, comfortable, he stretched, turned over, huddled himself into a heap, and stretched again. It was like lying in the warmest sea. He had never felt so warm, so utterly comfortable. The whole room oozed warmth. The bright blue table, the shining glass, the red carpet, the fire in the grate. With his hands behind his head, he lay back on the pillows.
“It’s only at night that I’m really scared. I wake up, I’m back in that place—I can’t get it out of my system. It’s the nights I hate.”
The scene in the old house in The Mall was still vivid in his mind.
“My mother’s sister,” he said, aloud into the room, “never heard of anybody by the name of Fanny.” He thought, too, of the words that had fallen out of an old woman’s mouth.
“I’ll go from here to-night, might as well. I’ll go to this place, I’ll hide up there for a bit. But I won’t stay there, I won’t stay in this accursed bloody country, and never again will I put a foot in it. And I know now that I won’t go to America. I’ll do nothing to please anybody, leastways him. I’ll go back to Gelton in good time. I’ll find Maureen. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll find her. Then perhaps she and Kilkey can come together again. I’ll get some kind of a job. I’ll live with them. It’ll be like home.”
His spirits soared, it was so wonderful to think about; it was like reaching the rock, clutching hard after battling through stormy seas.
“That would be good. I’ll see Dermod, too. I’d like to see him. Maybe I should have done what the old man asked me to do, stayed. Seen the lad. Poor, lonely old Kilkey, and a good chap into the bargain. I always remember how he used to write to me, every month, never failed, punctual as the stroke of a clock. Kilkey? I believe he was happy once—in the days when they lived in Price Street.” He heard the dinner gong sounding in the room below.
“Better go down,” he thought. He felt better, his heart lightened. “Yes, that’s as good a plan as any. Get them together again. We’ll all live together again.” As he hurried down thick-carpeted stairs he cried in his mind, “Fairy-tale, it’s a fairy-tale.”
He ate a good dinner. Afterwards he walked into the bar. He got a drink, and went over to the cheering fire, and, sitting down, was content to listen to the banter and chatter in the crowded room. At nine o’clock he got up, and went and paid his bill. A few minutes later, saying goodbye to nobody except the barman, he left for the railway station.
He was alone in the carriage. The little train dragged leaden out of the station, and soon it had begun to climb. The dark fields floated by, the telegraph posts like many tall, stiff men, slipped quickly past. Suddenly, through the open window, he smelt the fog that was coming in from the sea. He sat bolt upright in his seat. For a moment only he remembered a similar ride, seated between two uniformed men. A little train like this, an open window, the fog oozing in. He knew it was the fog smell that so sharply disturbed him. He peered out into the banked-up darkness, and he watched the poles again, fast flying shadows. He had a sensation of running, and he felt in a moment that he was running towards a new horizon, a new world. The past and its history receded.
“I wonder what kind of a place this Rath Na really is? A big old rambling place, Desmond once said. Out in the wilds. She was born there. I’ll see her room.”
It was like an adventure. “I’m glad I’m out of Gelton, and yet all the time I know I’ll go back. There’s something in that place, I don’t know what, but there is, there is. Yes, I expect I’ll return there all right.”
And his thought rocked to and fro with the train’s rhythm. “It still doesn’t seem quite real, sitting on this train, all alone, not a sound but the wheels, queer in a way, queer. The Ram’s Gate, why do they call it Rath Na anyhow? The Ram’s Gate,” he said again, trying to visualise the house—“Miss Fetch——” wondering what kind of person Miss Fetch was. “Expect she knows, too. Everybody knows. That’s the trouble. All that time. I think of a clock, a wall, don’t remember much else. I’ve altered a lot, took a good squint at myself in a glass this morning. Going grey. All that time older. Ah, well!”
He turned away from the window, he stood up. He looked into the mirror, but the light in the compartment was poor, he saw only a blur. He looked rather indifferently at advertisements of Irish resorts, too healthy people, happily sitting by impossible seas.
“Yes, I’m different. She wouldn’t know me if she saw me now,” and then he sat down again. “Have to plan my life now. I’ll go for long, long walks, all over the place. I’ll think it all out. I must try to find my sister. I must write to Anthony. To Kilkey. I’ll drop a line of thanks to old Delaney, an apology to that lawyer man. I’ll go to Dublin and see Anna. Wonder what she’s like? Tony was a sure sticker, quiet, secretive, serious sort of person. Wonder what he looks like? Must drop him a line some time.”
He was filled with resolve, he longed to gather together again the links, the strands that had held his family together. How scattered it was. He felt suddenly lost again, isolated. He ached to belong, to have something to hold. Everybody offered advice, suggested different things, there were many directions, yet somewhere there was the mirage. If only he could get back a feeling, a sense of being home, of being somewhere that held the warmth he had known all those years ago.
Out of his wretched moments, moments when he seemed to breathe in the grey dust of the quarries, trudging the hard, meaningless road—in those moments of utter wretchedness he leaped towards the lighthouse. The note came out of his pocket, he read it again. “Go there. Hide there.”
She knew he wanted that, she understood him, and then he saw her, very suddenly, glancing in on him through the carriage window. He saw her vividly, years away, and he could not believe that she would be different. His mind refused to accept it. She was twenty-seven, she was dark, lovely to look at.
“Perhaps I hated Desmond all the time, from the moment he brought her over to Gelton. Perhaps she loved me.”
The train had stopped. He got up and opened the window. Looking out he saw a stone platform, dim under a single light. He saw a man.
“Ballinasloe! Ballinasloe!” He had arrived. He got out and hurried to the porter.
“You’ll have to walk it, sir. You’ll get nothing hereabouts at this time of the night, and The Foxes is shut up, so you’ll get nothing there either. And look at the fog!”
“Yes, look at it,” Peter echoed the words, and then he felt the cold night air upon his neck. “I should have brought an overcoat. Why on earth didn’t I get one?”
He enquired the way, the easiest route. The porter accompanied him out of the station. He pointed away into the fog. “Straight ahead, sir, until you reach the crossroads, then a sharp left turn, and down Lanty’s Lane for about a half mile, sir, then another turn, this time right, and you go straight on until you come to Honeysuckle Lane. It’s a climb. All the way up it’s climbing——”
“Isn’t there any hotel here?”
“There’s The Foxes as doesn’t put up anybody at all, sir, and the woman’s sore ill there at the present. If I were you, sir, I’d just go doggedly ahead. Best and cheapest thing to do. It’ll keep you warm on this bitter night, fog glides into your bones hereabouts. You haven’t left your overcoat in the carriage, I suppose?”
“Thanks,” Peter said, “I’ll find my way all right. Don’t worry. Thanks again. Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir! And take care you doesn’t put your foot wrong, or else well have to be out early looking for you in the wide morning.”
He stood watching the tall man walk slowly away, collar turned up, hands thrust deep into his pockets, shoulders slightly bent.
“Now fancy a creature without an overcoat out on a night like this. And going off for that dumpy big house, too. But I wonder who the divil he can be?”
He returned to his smoky little room. There, he ruminated before his bright fire, and waited patiently for the last down train before he finally shut up the station.
Peter had vanished into the fog. The road ahead was as dark and mysterious as the house towards which he now plodded.
“Imagine a woman living alone in a place like that. She must have nerves of iron, or has she any at all? It’ll take me an hour, perhaps more. I wish I’d caught the earlier train,” remembering the struggle to make up his mind, in that too warm bed. “Just fancy my thinking of everything except an overcoat.”
The fog and the heightened silence wrapped more closely about him. He shivered. “I can only hope that this woman got my telegram. And I hope I can get something to drink there. It keeps you warm.”
The fog thickened, and he hurried on. “What a name for a house. That porter telling me to go down Lanty’s Lane, and then go down Honeysuckle Lane, as if I had a pair of eyes that could pick out names in a fog, as if the names were there. I can smell the sea.”
He stood for a moment or two, his head raised, breathing it in. He looked quickly round, he listened. He heard only his own breathing. The fog obliterated all sense of distance, and he was suddenly unsure, slackening his pace, groping his way forward into nowhere in particular.
“If I could see a house anywhere, a cottage——” He went on.
“How glad he must have been to see the back of me,” thinking aloud. “Yes, he must have found it very awkward, coming to see me at that Talon place. Never thought he would root me out, but I suppose he knows the holes in Gelton as well as I do.” As he talked, he kept turning his head to one side, as though the imagined figure now paced him, as though Desmond had suddenly loomed out of the fog, and walked beside him.
“He never trusted me from that day, never wanted to see me again. I know that.”
Suddenly he saw a light. As he approached it he heard the barking of a dog. He found a door, and knocked. An old man opened it to him. “Which way to Rath Na?”
“Straight ahead of you.” The voice was gruff, indifferent, the door banged.
“God! What a place to live in. What a fog.” He stopped again, striking matches.
“Surely I must turn here?” With half the contents of the match-box he lighted his way to the lane. “I’m all right,” he thought. He was still climbing. “And now it won’t be long.” Gelton was a thousand miles away, and the people in it, but sometimes the picture of its sprawling water-front came into his mind.
“Go to Rath Na. A room is ready. You could hide there. The housekeeper, Miss Fetch, is expecting you.” The words moved about him like hands, tugging at him, drawing him on, higher and higher, towards the house on the hill. Then he saw another light, and though he could not realize it, it was Miss Fetch’s sentinel candle that he now saw. “I believe I’ve arrived,” he thought. “I’m here,” he said.
It was Miss Fetch, who, after hours of waiting, heard the big gate creak. “He’s here,” she told herself. “Whoever he is, he’s here.” She went downstairs to meet him. Already he was tugging at the rusted bell, and it sent reverberations over the whole house. They seemed to burst through the walls, wash against the big door, ring loudly over the silent countryside.
“You are Mr. Fury?”
“I am. Good evening.”
The candle was held high. Two fierce eyes were looking at him.
“D’you know about the time?” she asked.
“I haven’t a watch. It was a long walk in this fog.”
“It’s half past one o’clock in the morning,” Miss Fetch informed him, adding, very begrudgingly, “You had better come in.”
He stepped inside. The door closed silently after him, shutting out the fog, and the sea, and the darkness. “This way please,” the housekeeper said.
He walked behind her down the long, dark hall. Clumsily he bumped into the oaken chest.
“And be very careful, please,” the tone of her voice admonishing. After all it was one o’clock of a foggy morning, and she did not know him.
“Yes, of course, sorry,” Peter said, following the candle, the thin figure, hearing the swish of a dress.
“You should not have come here at this time. You ought to have stayed the night in the village.” He was confused, stammering, he was sorry, it was the fog, he had lost his way, he had walked from the station, it couldn’t be helped.
“This way,” she said. “That is why you should have waited until the morning. It would have showed more sense in a grown man. But perhaps your anxiety to get here prevented you from being sensible. You have kept me out of bed. I go to bed at ten o’clock every night, prompt.”
“I’m sorry then,” Peter said again, and then he banged into a chair, and sent it scattering across the stone floor.
“Good gracious! You’re not drunk, I hope?” But he did not answer her, following quickly, smelling the dampness, the mustiness.
“Step this way. Watch the stairs. That carpet is covered, as you may see.” Up the
long flight of stairs, on to the dark landing, down an ink-black corridor, and then she stopped. Holding the candle high in the air, she studied him. “I presume you are Mr. Fury? The times we live in. People are incredible.”
“I am and I have proof of it,” he replied sharply.
“There is your room. I’ll leave you this candle. You had better come down to the kitchen where some supper is waiting you. It’s probably quite cold by this time. No matter. Do you want to come down at once?”
He followed her down. He said, a little nervously, “May I carry the candle for you?”
“I can manage.”
“In here,” Miss Fetch said, “and do be careful. What a clumsy person you are.”
“I suppose this is Rath Na,” Peter said.
“I suppose it is,” she replied. Again the candle was held high, and she stood behind the table, still watching him.
“Have you no overcoat with you on a night like this? Have you things with you?”
Her voice rang through the kitchen, an enquiry, an accusation, an affront. He was silent, and, looking across the table, under the candle’s light, noted only the prominence of bone in the white, severe features. The eyes seemed to search him out in the moment that they sat down opposite each other at the large, bare, wooden table, that might now be the desert between them. He looked everywhere at once, and suddenly he had seen everything. But never before had he seen such an enormous table, and by comparison the formidable Talon table at The Curving Light, faded away. Then he sat down, and he ignored the woman.
She put the candle on the table, crossed to the range, and from the oven she took out a stew-pot. This she placed in front of him. She banged things down; the cutlery struck the table, the plate ground its way across the wooden surface. For a moment she remained standing at his shoulder, looking down on his head, and the closely-cropped hair, the sallow face, and the big hands, the fingers and the finger-nails, the features in profile, the cheap, shapeless, tweed suit.