by James Hanley
“I said I was sorry to hear of your sad journey over here. Your sister-in-law was telling me about it yesterday. It must have been bitter indeed, God help you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“If there’s anything else you want, Mr. Fury, just call out,” she said, and she opened the door and went out.
“She won’t come down,” he told himself, “and I’ll go out for a walk. My God! I never lay awake so long, I never watched so long for the light and was glad when it came. I was never so glad to get out of the room. That bloody man I hate was as close to her as I was, turned when I turned, looked when I looked, spoke when I spoke, I could feel it, I knew it, she’s tormented by his absence, she can’t stop thinking about him, she can’t, she can’t. I know. God I know. He’ll turn up here and she’ll crawl into his arms. I knew it the moment I woke up. She wasn’t there, she was too far away, and I couldn’t have reached her any more. It just happened like that. Changed in an instant, and I felt like the customer up the stairs. The way she smiled, the things she hid behind it, the way she looked at me, lying with her head flat back on that pillow, and told me I’d waked up in the night, shouting. A bad dream, she said. And the sound of her voice, even that seemed different, and her eyes tight shut as though she couldn’t bear to open them again, and the quietness when she said, ‘Put out the light. It hurts my eyes.’ It hurt mine, too, as I lay in the bloody darkness and wondered what had happened. All in an instant. Completely changed. Christ! I must be the biggest bloody fool unhung. The way it leapt out, the way she gave and gave, I thought she loved me, and I thought I had something to hang on to, and for the first time in my whole life I was close and I was warm, and then there she was miles away, cold as ice, almost indifferent. If she’d said it but once. Just said it. I love you.
“‘Sheila,’ I said, I said it twice.
“‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘what’s happened?’
“‘Nothing,’ she said, without a move, without a sign, and I knew there was something.
“‘It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Desmond?’
“‘Put out the light,’ she said, and I put it out.
“It was then I knew, the very moment I put out the light. I wanted to shout out his name, I wanted to drag him out by the heels, and I wanted to talk him to shreds.
“‘It is him,’ I said. Lying there like a log, and not a sound. I wanted to hammer it out.
“‘Isn’t it?’
“‘Can’t you understand?’ she said, and I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to. I was flung right back against that wall, right back, and there was the dwarf with a bowler hat and an umbrella, asking me where I wanted to go, and handing me five whole shillings as though I ought to kneel down and thank him.
“‘I’m sorry I came,’ I said. It was as if she wasn’t even there, that I was talking to myself. ‘You were the only friend I ever had in my life, and all that time I was away I never once forgot it, and when I got that note I thought my heart would burst, I was so glad, so happy, I couldn’t believe it, and I knew you’d never forgotten me, and I forgot the road that was empty and the house that was closed. It’s you that doesn’t understand.’
“She cried, and I let her cry, and I knew it was the end. ‘Listen,’ she said, and I didn’t listen, I couldn’t, I didn’t want to.
“‘Listen,’ she said again, and that time I thought she moved, I thought she leaned towards me, but I couldn’t see, couldn’t feel. I felt as though the very darkness entangled me, like ropes on my arms, my legs, I just couldn’t move, and I couldn’t answer. And suddenly there was this man in front of me, every inch of him, and I hated him and I remembered him, and then I was talking, then I was stripping him, then I was reminding her.
“‘Can you remember an evening in Price Street, a particular evening that I can remember, because it was snowing, and the whole city was covered in a blanket, and I came over and knocked and there was no answer, and I opened the door and walked in and you were there, and he was, and your head was fast to that wall, and his elephant hand was wide spread right across your face, and he pressed and pressed, until I thought he’d push you right through the wall. And can you remember the fingers in your hair, and pulling at it, and can you remember the hand coming slowly down your face to your neck, and pressing there, and can you hear him talking to you, and shouting, and can you remember his face that was so close to yours? Can you hear him now, as you lie there thinking about him, feeling him, crying about him? I can. I was so frozen with horror that I couldn’t move. You remember, don’t you? I do, because only the night before I’d arrived home from the college in Ireland, and there he was accusing you, of something between you and a man named Dwyer. And why? Because he had smiled at you, and you’d smiled back at him. Think of it. A smile was only a smile until he saw the one Dwyer gave you.
“‘“Christ damn you! You were. I saw you,”’ he said, and you said, “‘I can’t help being smiled at,”’ and then he struck you across the face, and still I couldn’t move, and I was even afraid of him myself, and he shouted right in your face. “‘I tell you I saw you both. Both,”’ screaming it, completely crazy, out of his mind with jealousy, with hatred of any man that ever came near you. Can you remember the words? I can. I can even see his lips so tight against your own as though the swine would make you eat the words out of his own big slobbering mouth.
“‘“Every hair of your head,”’ he said, “‘every single hair, even the skin of the soles of your feet,”’ he said, “‘they’re mine, you’re mine, and I’ll kill any man that comes between us.’” You remember Sheila. The one you loved and the one you laughed at. The one of whom you were afraid, the one who was shy, the one who was clumsy, the one who’s travelled far to-day by virtue of all those wooden heads that helped him along the road. The one you told me about. The one who did all the talking, and the ringing of the bells, and helped straighten the back of many a wretch before he learned how to knock him down again. The one in London to-day, and who’s out for what he can get, and the one who turned dock labour into an army and grovelled when they made him a Captain, the one you knelt down to and whose boots you polished. Remember him? Remember his name? Think of it. My own brother. He was going to turn the whole bloody world into a trade union, and was only angry with God Almighty because he couldn’t give Him a union card too. With his brotherly love and his damned comradeship that folded its arms the moment he reached his own front door. And think of the times you begged him to go and see my mother, do you remember? And the number of letters he wrote to me when I was away, hundreds and thousands that came every day and blocked up the gaol gates. Can you remember it all? And that house, that wall, you were still stiff against it, you were crying, and slowly he pressed you down, right down, his big hands on your shoulders, pressing and pressing and when you were on your knees he said, “Say you’re sorry”. Remember that? I do. I have never forgotten. I hated him then, I hate him now. And there you lie, crying about him. God I know. I realized it this very moment, the moment I woke up. And that was only one night. There were others. The ones I didn’t see, the ones that mother never learned about. Multiply them, multiply them, and you reach the length of your own life. He didn’t even want the child. You know he didn’t. He wants nothing but power, and more power, and that’s all. He’s travelled far indeed from his father’s house. I think about it, too, as I thought about it when I had to force my feet to take me to that miserable and empty place, and asked myself as I knelt why I felt so bitter and so sad. I’d have given my heart to have been able to hold a single finger, a single strand of her hair, to have heard just one simple word from my mother’s mouth, and beside her that silent, uncomplaining man with a hundred lifetimes locked up inside him. I could cry too, just like you, just like you.’ She reached out for my hand. I felt it come, she took my own, and I pulled it away, there was nothing in my hand, nothing left, it was quite empty. I was empty. Her hand came out again, I felt it, clutching, but it was no use. I knew it wasn�
��t. It was too late. If she’d thrown herself on me, if she’d smothered me, if she’d clawed and clung, I couldn’t have spoken, I couldn’t have looked, and I could never have felt. Something went right out of me. It was finished. The room filled with that man, filled with him, and I hated him. I could feel him there, between us, see him, smell him, and God Almighty there she was, crying about him. Crying.
“I felt for words, I dug for them. I hated the darkness, I hated lying there, I hated waiting for nothing. ‘I can’t help myself,’ she said.
“‘Neither can I.’
“The things I wanted to say, the things I didn’t. ‘Where is he now? Can you feel him, his arms wrapped round you, right round? Is he feeling for the child? Are you? Are you crawling again, for what you want, for what he doesn’t? Are you kissing his boots again? Are you opening up and spreading out and bedding down? Now. In this stifling, bloody bed? Is he talking in your ear? Is the length of your legs the length of his exciting life? Is he telling you what you were and what you are? Is he giving you orders again? Is he telling you to walk past a house and a window and not look in? Are you walking miles and miles, are you standing in the rain again, at the street corner, at the back of the shed, on the waste ground, are you listening to him shouting, are you watching him harangue the mugs, are you wishing those wide spreading arms were all for you? Are you? Or are you thinking of your castle in the dead land? I wonder what the hell you’re thinking about.”
“And I did, yes, in that horrible moment when I saw everything break up, I would have liked to have dug the words out of her shut mouth and her closed eyes, and her strange, unbelievable attitude as she lay on the very edge of that bed, a million miles away from me. I would have liked to have plastered them on the wall and read them. They were his arms and not mine, and I never even knew. I’m too thick, too bloody ignorant to know. His mouth, his lips, his hands, right down and right in, as she gives, as she grovels, as she begs.
“‘Peter,’ she said, so quietly, so suddenly, and I seemed to watch my own name go round in a circle and come back to me, strike me.
“‘Well?’ One word. That was all. I couldn’t reach further than that.
“‘Listen, dear.’
“‘Dear.’ I thought, ‘dear’, and it dragged up the other words after it.
“‘Your need,’ she said, ‘your need’, that first night, that first hour, when I was blind, when I was trying to find my way in, somewhere, anywhere, I remember the words. My bloody ‘need’, she said. That time, the wonderful time, the time I was warm, the time I was trusting, the time I was hoping in, had waited for, had watched for, and I saw the years melt away one after another and I felt I was home. Home at last.
“‘Listen, Peter dear, please listen,’ she said.
“My God but I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to be sorry for her, I wanted to hold her in my arms, I wanted us both loving, both blind, but I couldn’t listen, and I heard her cry into the pillow, and I let her cry. The clock’s ticks sounded like feet all over the room. ‘He’ll come after you and you’ll throw your arms about him. He won’t come and you’ll crawl back across the sea. I don’t believe this is your home, was ever your home. I don’t believe this tomb was anybody’s home.’
“She moved, I heard her move, and I didn’t want her, I wanted nothing, and I knew the words I couldn’t find, they were buried deep down in her, anchored there, steel words, they wouldn’t budge, and she had only to turn a key, the simplest key in the world, and let them come, and speak them to me. Whenever I was close, whenever I lay with her, I was always feeling for those words, wanting them, waiting for them, if only she’d spoken them. Just three. I love you. She doesn’t, and I’m a fool. Closer now, her hand on my neck, her fingers at my hair, my head pressed to her breast, but anything can come out, but not the words I want. No. She loves this other man. That’s all, that’s just all. ‘Leave me alone,’ I said.
“I thrust my head back, I couldn’t bear it, hating seeing her, shut my eyes, it was such a downright bloody lie.
“‘No—No.’
“She sobbed on my shoulder. ‘I can’t help myself.’ I wasn’t even listening. I was listening to something else. A hard voice in my own ear, the voice I didn’t want, the one I dodged, the one I turned my back on, shut my ears against. ‘There’s somebody talking to me already,’ I said. ‘Who?’
“‘It doesn’t matter,’ and it didn’t.
“‘Who?’ she asked again, and that time I couldn’t get clear, I was tight in her arms. ‘Who?’
“‘Just a bent man with stone legs,’ I said. I sat up then.
“‘Where are you going?’
“‘Out.’
“I groped about for my clothes, and I got out, I left her, left the room, the house. I walked down that drive with Gelton behind me, Gelton talking, and I had to listen, had to listen across that field, and into this lane, and down that road, and he was still behind me, the stone-legged bastard I’d almost forgotten about, down another lane and he was still there, hanging on, won’t let go, I knew he wouldn’t. Telling me, telling me, shouting into my ear, making me listen. I had to, I just couldn’t get clear of Gelton. Yes, a bent man with stone legs, and he’ll never break. Feet in my ear, sea in my ear, words, words and words. ‘The train moves like a snail but it will at last reach the coast.’
“I saw the train, I heard it puffing asthmatically across a silent countryside. ‘The ship sails at ten o’clock prompt, and you’ll be home in the morning.’
“Home. Home. ‘Sailors are ten for a penny now, but you’ll get your chance.’
“I thought of that, I thought hard about it. ‘The house is still in the same street, off the same road, and so is the door, and you can knock on it forever and forever, and it will never open.’
“And that was Gelton telling me what my name was. ‘The roads are the same as ever they were, but more clouded with men, and they walk about them saying that the ships are rusting up, glued to the quays, can’t move, and won’t move.’
“I saw the river and the ships, the roads and the men. I stopped by a dry wall and I leaned against it, listening to this damned city shouting in my ears, and I stared down at the dark of a lane, and the mud of a lane. I felt cold, miserable, and I had to listen. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sound of hounds on a farm, and the owl hooting just over my head. ‘You know about the hatch and the winch, the derrick, the block, and the guy rope. You’ll know the ship when you see it.’
“I knew I would, I knew it all along. ‘You’ve been hiding between a woman’s legs.’ Gelton was breathing down my neck. I just walked on, didn’t know where, didn’t care much, and somehow I knew that I’d never get rid of the man with the stone legs, never.
“‘You ought to have known from the beginning.’
“Anywhere on this walk I can hear Gelton shuffling behind me. I reach out and I stumble, I lean to the tree and the wall, I stand still by a bank. And everywhere I move I wake the things that are sleeping. The frightened, fluttering birds, the snarling, chain-locked dog in the kennel, and once an explosion of horses away from a farm gate. I stopped then. I turned round and looked back at the tomb of a house that was still lost in the darkness. A house as big as a town, the one that missed the petrol. An echo in every room I walked in, a smell of money. ‘God Almighty’s little fright is still living in Bonim Road, and he’s so deaf he can’t even hear what other people are saying. He’s still alone, and he’s still waiting for somebody that will come, anybody that will come. His son from the sea, his wife out of nowhere.’ And I thought of Joseph Kilkey. I couldn’t help thinking about him. I talked to myself, and I talked into the empty air.
“‘All right. Yes, I’ll go back to-morrow, I’m coming back, I want to, I am back,’ I said, and I knew that he was as deaf as a post. Hears nothing, and waits for everything, the son, the wife, a happier day. I knew where my place was.
“‘You should have known from the beginning,’ Gelton said again, like a parrot.
Gelton never stops talking, never stops ramming the words down my ear. Yes, perhaps I should. Perhaps the whole thing is just a lovely dream. I thought of the house again, and of the fisherman’s daughter with the keys around her waist, smiling her smile, cunning as a monkey, pious as a monk, her room and her prayers, and her saints as close to her as her own skin. Smiling and saying nothing, watching us make bloody fools of ourselves, watching us stumble in and out of the ghost-ridden rooms. I walked on, and on, and on, and I couldn’t get rid of the voice in my ears. ‘Go back. Go back.’
“‘I’ll go back,’ I began telling myself, ‘I’ll go back, yes, I’ll clear out to-morrow,’ and all the time I could see nothing ahead of me but the house, and the room, the woman and the bed. The things she remembered to forget, the things she forgot to remember. I thought of him. I couldn’t help thinking of him, his hands, his mouth, his eyes. Just being sorry for me, opening her legs and swallowing me up. Christ! When I think about it. I was talking to her again, and I was simply hating her. ‘Crawl back then, bend down, right down. Grovel.’
“We could have been happy, I know we could. I stopped by a tree and I leaned against it, and I asked myself what the hell I was doing here, and I didn’t even know, and then I turned round and began the long walk back to the house. I could hear the clopping sounds of a horse on a near-by road, and I imagined the man striding it as he went off to his work on the farm. I saw the first light begin to break through the trees. ‘To-morrow,’ I thought, ‘to-morrow.’
“My feet plodded, dragged, it was only my thoughts that pushed me forward. Looking back from time to time I could see the darkness still pocketing the hills, the blue of them yet hidden, and sometimes I’d just stand and stare, and think of them silent, peaceful, like the horse on the road, the man. The mist was rising all about me, and for the first time I became aware of the silence spread over this morning land.
“If only she’d said it, just once, meant it. If—— Over the fields and into the wood, across the bridge and down into the paddocks, behind the stables and into the garden, on to the drive and down between the avenue of trees that stood up like men. Then I saw the single light from the high room, and I knew that the saint was up and setting about her business.