An End and a Beginning

by James Hanley

  “Since two o’clock.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am not wanted until ten when the Langsby comes in.”

  “You’ve sat here all this time. Why? Are you ill?”

  “I am not ill.”

  I knelt down and looked at him, and only then did I notice the colour of his hands. He raised his head, stared at me, but said nothing.

  “I’ll get you a drink,” I said, and ran out, and I brought back a little whisky. “Drink it. Mother’s out, she won’t be long.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out, he closed it again.

  “What is wrong?”

  “Even my savings have gone.”

  “Your savings, what savings?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and his head lay heavy on my arm.

  “It’s not there, it’s gone, all of it.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The money,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “I just don’t know,” he said.

  I hardly realized he was talking to me, yet the room was suddenly full of words. Only then did I notice a trail of soot upon the carpet, and the blackened hands.

  “I had planned to take your mother back to Ireland for two weeks. I have saved for two years. Now she must stay where she is, and so must I.”

  “Father! Listen to me, just for once, just this time.”

  “Get out of my bloody sight,” he said. And I walked out of his bloody sight. I ran from the house. I walked the streets, I passed and re-passed the house, I could not look at it.

  “Die, priest,” I kept saying to myself. “Die, priest,” and then I was hurrying towards my sister’s house. “She’ll know, know all.”

  She is wearing a plain green dress, sat sewing in a chair, the light behind her. The planned wife. How much a girl she is against what she waits for, the aged man, the willed one, the leathern husband who could be her father thrice. The set of the head, the youth of her neck, the childish hands, each seems to me to mirror my mother’s iron will and determination. I dared not ask her how she was, I dared not say, “Maureen. Are you happy?”

  She got up, she flung down her sewing, she embraced me. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, “I’ll make some tea, Peter.”

  “I won’t stay, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are things you must tell me, Maureen.”

  “What things?”

  “Tell me how much I cost,” I said. “Perhaps three years ago I was too young to ask. To-day I am not too young to find out.”

  “Sit down.”

  I sat down. She took my hands, looked at me, and said quietly, as casually as though she were talking about the weather, “First I will tell you why I’m here. I do not love this man I married. He’s a good man, after his own fashion. That was why Mother insisted on my marrying him. She thinks I will be safe in a heathen country. That is her view. She hates this place, and she has often told me there was never any need to leave home, and she calls father a coward for doing so. I married Kilkey to get out of her sight, to get out of that house.”

  “How much did I cost?”

  “Poor father. He’s the one I think of most in this place. Many a night I lie on my back and I think of the ship. I think of him lying in his bunk, miles from our life, miles from this world. Just think of it, Peter. The number of oceans that father’s crossed, and he hardly ever sees the sea at all. I think of thousands of iron steps, I hear him climbing down. I’m sure he always thinks of Mother, and us. He is good. I remember one evening——”

  “How much did I cost?”

  “You ask that? You can ask me that?”

  “How much?” and I gripped her hands so tightly that she winced.

  “How dare you?”

  “You’re like the rest of them,” I said, “you hate me, don’t you?”

  “I can’t talk to you,” she said, and drew away from me. There was a dead silence. “I can’t even see you,” she said, and turned her hack on me.

  “What have I done?”

  “Ask father.”

  “But what, what, Christ! Why are you so mysterious about it?”

  “I like that—from the priest to be,” she said.

  “What?” I shouted.

  “Ask Kilkey. He’ll be here soon. He’ll tell you. But he’ll smile first, he’ll tell me how much he loves me, he’ll dream of the brat.” Still with her back to me she walked slowly from the room, and left me standing there. I waited a while, listening, I even thought she might come down again, might even call to me, and when she did not I knew that the only thing to do was to leave and walk back to the house.

  A mysterious house, so silent, not a light in it, a fire almost black, my mother still out. I thought about father and went to him. He had not moved. I closed the door quietly and approached his chair. I knelt down. I spoke. “Father! Are you all right now? Shall I light the light?”

  “If you want to.”

  “Has Mother been back?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t hear her. I didn’t know she’d gone out.”

  “She’s been out for hours.”

  “She’ll be back. She always comes back,” he said.

  “I wonder where she’s gone?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m simply the lodger in this house,” he said.

  “Do come into the other room. You can’t sit there, without a fire. Come on, Father,” and I helped him up and we went back to the living-room.

  “There,” and he sat down by the fire. I looked across at him, and when I looked I felt ashamed all over again, and I thought, “His back, too.”

  “Father!”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Why is Mother so unhappy, she’s been like that ever since we came to England.”

  “Because we had to leave Ireland,” he said. “And she’s angry too.”

  “We had to leave?”

  “Bloody fools we would have been to have stayed,” he said.

  “What did you think of Mother sending me away to that seminary?”

  “Not much, but it pleased her, it made her happy.”

  “And now that I’ve run away and come home again?”

  “I hate to see your mother unhappy. I love your mother, so much that I can’t even tell her how often she’s a very silly woman, a very headstrong, independent creature. But she has courage, such determination. A lot of it’s wrong, but you have to admire it.”

  “I never wanted to go,” I said.

  “You’re only a kid, what the hell would you know about it?” He got up and came over to me, he took my hand in a grip of iron.

  “You must never tell her that, never, you understand. It would break her heart, and if ever you do I’ll break your neck.” Then he let go my hand and returned to his chair.

  “I shall do what the others have done,” I said.

  “Do what the hell you like. What business is it of mine what any of you do? Where do I come in? By the back door two or three times a year. I’m only the lodger. But this money of mine, it’s been a terrible blow, a terrible blow. It’s made me unhappy. I’m going out, and when she comes home tell her I’ve gone off for a little walk.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said, and I watched him go.

  I sat up waiting for Mother. It was late when she got back. She asked me where Father was, and I said, ‘Out’, just like that. We had supper in stony silence. I said good-night and went to bed.

  I couldn’t rest. I lay there, listening for the sound of the door, my father returning. And like a tumbril in my mind, backwards and forwards, dragged the question, “How much does faith cost?”

  I heard the door close. Later I heard their raised voices.

  “How much does it cost?”

  “Where does she go?”

  “What is secret in this bloody house?”

  “Where will it end?”

  I could see the house breaking up, hear it breaking, the door banging as
one after another left. For what? Because Mother wanted a priest, because I wanted only her happiness, to break this terrible sadness and loneliness. Because Father only wanted his peace. Because my brothers and sister only wanted their freedom. “I’ll look for a ship,” I thought. “I’ll get out of the bloody place too.”

  I heard them coming up at last, slowly, one after the other, like tired, bone-weary people, as though their angry words had exhausted them, and I counted their steps on the stairs, heard their door close, heard my mother pray.

  “Where does the money go?”

  “Where had it gone?” asked Brother Anselm.

  “To the same person, the woman Ragner.”

  He got up and paced the room, I can see his hands pushed up the capacious sleeves of his brown habit. I just stared at my own, spread flat upon my knees. I remember I was on the point of being sick.

  “It was horrible. Horrible.” And the Brother walked up and down, and he waited for the horror to come out.

  “Don’t be ashamed of that. Be sick. Would you like a little brandy?”

  “No, thank you, Brother,” I said. “No thank you.” I could feel him standing behind me, bent over my shoulder.

  “I’m glad I came,” I said.

  “Your father went back to the sea then?”

  “He went his way. There was only Mother and myself. Once a week Maureen and her husband visited the house. It pleased Mother. My sister changed a lot after my father went back to sea. She was sorry for Mother. We all were, even though she had driven them from the house. She even pretended to be happy with her old man.”

  “But you never really broke with each other?” he said.

  “No. In spite of everything we hung together. But I had no place, I felt I had no place. My brothers, even my sister hated me because I had gone to be a priest. They called it senseless, waste, and of course that’s what it turned out to be in the end. They despised me for doing what I did, and my mother hated me for not doing what she wanted. Perhaps she had a right to be angry, but she should have told me the truth. My father was indifferent. He was always away, his life was cut off from us. Mother was a determined and ambitious woman. She confided in nobody.”

  “But your father must have known.”

  “Nobody knew, though in the end my sister’s husband became involved, and he had to know. I found that out, too. I found out because one evening when my mother went out I followed after her. I had often wondered where she went, and sometimes why she was so long away. She conveyed nothing, hinted nothing. She was in a net of her own making. She could not bear defeat.”

  “She was involved with this woman you speak of?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I was already there, following behind my mother to the house in Banfield Road.

  Hiding. Watching. A squat, brown stone house stood alone, surrounded by nothing save derelict land. I watched her go in through an ever opening and shutting door. I walked up, opened it and looked inside. The longest room I have ever seen, a bare room along one wall of which ran a wooden bench. Two people were seated on this, and one was Mother. A light shining over a desk, and behind it a man and a woman. The man is blue-jerseyed, he looks like a sailor. He stands holding in his hands a ledger that is as big as the Bible. The woman is seated, and is staring at her ringed fingers. She is heavily built, swarthy, black-haired. The light above her head catches the rings on her hands. Only the top of this room is visible, the rest of it is in darkness. I lean close to the wall. The room is full of echoes. I think of a railway station, a platform, two waiting passengers. “Next.”

  A woman rises to her feet and approaches the desk. “Evans.”

  “Four pounds. Interest owing on previous month, three pounds.”

  She speaks. “You went to the works. You informed them. I asked you not to. My husband knows.”

  “That is covered by the agreement you signed. Read it again.”

  She turns and walks away, passes me as I stand locked to the wall.

  “The secret journeys,” I thought, “they all end here. There is no place else.” I am unseen, and I am still listening. “Next.”

  I saw my mother rise and approach the desk. “Fury.”

  “Dispense with preliminaries, Corkran,” Mrs. Ragner said, “come direct to the loans.”

  “Yes, ma’m.”

  “A first loan of twenty-five pounds was made in April last year with an agreed interest of ten pounds, plus a collecting charge of seven and sixpence a month——”

  “Mrs. Fury is too proud to come to the office with the money, and does not mind paying the collecting charges, but one can be generous with other people’s money, Corkran.”

  Mrs. Ragner does not look up. It is not her business. She loans the money, he looks at the clients.

  “The payments on the first loan lapsed on six occasions, and I think there was an added interest of eight shillings and sixpence charged on these monthly sums?”

  “Yes, ma’m. And in November of that year the interest had exceeded the actual loan, so that in December last there was a total owing of thirty-nine pounds eleven shillings——”

  “And a second loan of fifty pounds was made on Jan. Ist last in order to clear off the balance on the first loan, and a payment was made to the client of ten pounds nine shillings. The interest on the second loan was twenty-seven pounds. The balance then stood at seventy-seven pounds, plus the usual collecting charges, and any interest due on lapsed payments.”

  “That loan was covered by a guarantee.”

  “Yes. The document is here. It authorized us to collect direct from the shipowners. The collecting charges were seven shillings monthly. But in May of this year payments ceased owing to the client’s husband being in hospital in New York for two months due to an accident, and the interest charges rose as from that date.”

  “I think the contents of the house were valued and a document signed by Mrs. Fury giving us the right to foreclose in event of non-payment.”

  “Correct, ma’m.”

  “And in July the balance on the second loan stood at eighty-eight pounds?”

  “Correct.”

  “There was then a six-weeks lapse in payments and the usual letter was sent?”

  “On two occasions, but there was no answer, and accordingly I called on the client. In that interview I explained to her the gravity of the situation, and I took the opportunity of pointing out that the matter must be settled.”

  “An offer of a third loan of one hundred pounds was made in order to clear off the balance owing on the second loan, providing the usual sureties were forthcoming.”

  “Certain insurance policies were surrendered and the loan made. An interest of forty-two pounds was attached, but no collecting charges were made as the client herself called with the monthly payments.”

  “That is correct. But the position is that the guarantor Kilkey has now withdrawn from the matter.”

  “I called on him for verification and I understand he could no longer cover the fifty per cent, ma’m.”

  “There is no deterioration in the value of the house contents?”

  “None. This was again valued last week, though it was with some difficulty that I got into the house.”

  “Some question of an interest in a small legacy was then proposed?”

  “Yes, but refused. The sum it would produce would not cover the liability.”

  “If the furniture is realized upon, there would still be a balance of some thirty pounds? Is that correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And to clear off the present liability involves a downright payment of one hundred and seven pounds capital, and forty-nine pounds interest.”

  “Correct.”

  “Has the client that sum with her?” Mrs. Ragner still studies her rings. Not once has she looked upwards.

  “Have you that sum with you?” the man asked.

  “I have forty pounds.”

  “We require the full sum, a final settlement, Corkran. The cli
ent is unsatisfactory. We can foreclose?”

  “Correct.”

  Mrs. Ragner appeared to be talking to her ringed fingers. “We require a final settlement, Corkran. Give a receipt for the forty pounds, a balance of one hundred and sixteen pounds to be paid within five days.”

  “Here is your receipt,” the man said, and I saw him hand it to my mother. The woman behind the desk had risen to her feet, turned quickly, and vanished behind thick red curtains. The whole thing was machine-like, impersonal. I stood there and I felt stunned. I could scarcely breath. This woman might have been talking to herself, there was something nightmarish about that long room. I never forgot the room, never. The man then spoke. He shut his ledger, gathered together the papers off the desk, saying as he did so, “That is all. There is nothing to wait for.”

  I watched him, too, vanish behind that curtain. And I watched my mother standing there, her hands gripping the back of the chair. A complete silence enveloped the room. At any moment she might turn, and I could not look at her. I knew I could not, and I knew I could not wait. If she had fallen I could not have moved. Slowly I walked myself backwards, always keeping close to the wall, until finally I reached the door, through which I noiselessly passed, and the moment I reached the open air I began to run, and never stopped running until I had reached the house. I went upstairs to my room. I locked the door.

  “It was a terrible sacrifice,” Father Anselm said.

  But he might well have been talking to the wall. I wasn’t there, I was still back, back in the room, sat on my own bed in the darkness, feeling as though I had watched Mother being kicked, feeling as though the house itself was being crushed to pieces. I felt bitterly sorry for her. Yet I dreaded her coming back, dreaded having to go down, to meet her, to see her face, to have to wait for her to speak.

  “God! How lonely she must feel,” I thought, and the moment I heard the key in the lock I rushed downstairs and opened the door to her. “I’m glad you’re back, Mother,” I said.

  “Are you?” She walked past me down the hall, removed her hat and coat and hung them up. “Where is your father?”