An End and a Beginning

by James Hanley

  “Poor Miss Fetch. I wonder if she ever dreamed of marrying the Colonel. Perhaps she’s even happy in her own queer way, loving her keys and her silence, the ghost-filled rooms and her own that is warm with prayers, with saints, with books and beads that will chariot her skywards on the big day. I wonder if she will go, I wonder if she wants to. I wonder what she thinks. That knowing bloody smile she has, the way she looked me up and down the evening I came, the way she watched me. Perhaps she was afraid of me.

  “I sat down on a wooden bench and stared up at her candlelit room. I thought of yesterday, the crazy day, the day bursting with action and resolutions, the day of destruction. That endless tramping up and down the stairs, that shifting, and pulling, that fondling and that hurling out, and always I was watching her, wondering about her, being angry with her, being sorry for her, there was something a little mad about her. And that housekeeper close behind her, always there, and the times I wished her to hell out of my sight. I couldn’t even speak, couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Throwing the orders over her shoulder, one after another, the captain of the big ship setting everywhere to rights, building upwards again, and always forgetting that the anchor was there, right down, deep down; it would never come up. The orgy of smashing, the things she hated, the things that pleased her. Animated and smiling, serious and furious, sad and quite lost. How she enjoyed the smashing, how she must have loathed the things that flew from her hand. And the smoke sent flying up one chimney after another, making the ship move, making the house warm. An end and a beginning, she said. Perhaps it was, perhaps it is. I just sat on the bench and watched the light come, watched it grow.

  “The way she talked to me yesterday, like a sister, like a mother. And so concerned, it touched me deeply, but it wasn’t the answer, she knew it wasn’t, she doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to, the words are still there, deep inside, locked away, she can’t speak them. That’s all I wanted. The things she said.

  “‘You could teach,’ she said.

  “‘Teach?’ I was staggered, and I still am.

  “‘Why not? You’ve had the training, and there’s always room for teachers.’ I said no, and that was what I meant, I hadn’t any ambitions that way. I was scared of that word. Somebody else had been ambitious for me, and look where I was. I laughed it away.

  “‘What do you intend to do?’ she asked.

  “How genuine she was, how determined to be my sister, my mother. I didn’t even know. ‘I’ll do something,’ I said, and I had a feeling even then as to what it might be, some kind of a ship was beginning to stir inside me.

  “‘I’m too new, I’m too bloody raw. I can’t say what I’ll do. But I won’t starve. I expect I’ll just do what the others did.’ It required no effort to say it, and somehow I even felt a warmth coming to me, and that’s what I wanted, warmth, and that reaching out to get a hold on something, and to hang on to it, that’s what I watched for. That’s all I ever wanted, Sheila, just Sheila. It’s always her, and nobody else, I’ve never altered. If only she’d say it to me, just the once. Christ! I could move, I could tear up all the roots, we could get clear away from it, away from Gelton, and away from this damned grave of a house. I think about it, I can’t stop thinking about it, it lifts me up, I’ll crawl and beg for the words out of her mouth, if only she knew. If only she wasn’t so bloody calm when she talks to me, as if I didn’t know what she’s left behind her, and what she walked into, and what she wallowed in. Happy with him. I don’t believe it. She was always so good at hiding things. I can only see the flowers when she kneels down and hides the mud. God! The things I remember. The things that come clear to me as I sit on this bench. The way I thought about her, dreamed about her, up in that damned hole all those years. Talking to myself, talking to her.

  “‘What is it like down there, Sheila?’ I’d say. ‘To-day, in Gelton, this very day, this very minute. Are you still in Price Street.’ Is he there, too? Funny, but I could never get to calling him by his name, it was always he, or him. And I always thought of him as thrusting, stamping in, stamping down, climbing up, always climbing up, kicking things out of his way, kicking people, the usual ones, the good old mugs. He’s got where he wanted to get. The times I looked at that slit-holed door and saw her peeping through, or looking down at me from that window that was always worth reaching for. Smiling, always smiling in. Sometimes she was so real I could have touched her. I’d ask myself, what was she doing yesterday, last night, what is she doing now, this very minute, on this day, on any day, on a bright morning, on a dark one, a Saturday afternoon, a Sunday evening? I could see her sitting, hear her talking, see her lying and always with those closed but beautiful eyes. I had a little map of her days in my mind, I used to stick little flags in it, wanting to remember something I’d imagined her doing, saying, thinking, hating to forget it.

  “I glanced up at the window again. The light was still there, and I could see the housekeeper’s shadow moving to and fro across the blind. It is so still that I can hear a murmuring sound out of her open window. Miss Fetch might be talking to herself, which she often does when she isn’t saying her prayers. I’ve never really talked to her, got inside. A way in is tricky, I think it might be difficult to talk to a saint. I think of her age, of her curious, shut-down, hemmed-in life between walls, a lifetime of serving others. I think of her in that huge kitchen, bent over a stove, this woman in her stiff black and her pure white. I can even see her hands as she stirs the invisible something in a pan, and it makes me think of her as bent and stirring from the day she is born. Over her head I can see the vast array of burnished copper pans, of kettles and jugs and the rest, relics of more spacious days, of what they call the good old days, the great days. I look at the eternal glow of the fire. Lucky house, I think, having a fire to light. So many of them are on their uppers, only a single assembly of flames to remember, I hear a clang of the old times and the new. I see this shadow on a window, and I think of her so-private life, the walls as cell and shield. I think of her girlish bout with the Colonel. I think of her often lonely, I think of her postman friend. Poor Miss Fetch. Committed Miss Fetch. I think of my simple questions, my silly ones. Had she liked working at Rath Na? The smile and the answer. At fifteen and a half she had been sent up by her fisherman father, and nobody had ever asked her what she liked. And did she like the Downeys? ‘I never discuss my employers with anyone,’ she said, and I can hear her saying it, experience a gentle snub for a second time. ‘I just got used to serving people,’ she said.

  “It is getting lighter, and I am still seated on this bench. The light in her room had suddenly gone out. I got up and walked round to the back of the house. I found myself standing at the edge of what might be a forest, but it is only a huge kitchen garden. Here, nothing is small, everything is huge. A dense, tangled mass of rotting vegetation. The kitchen garden. I stare at it, and it stares back at me. There is something wilful about it, and something depressing, and I turned away and walked along to the big window of the dining-room. I remember sitting there only a few hours ago.

  “I am sitting in that room, she is, a fire is lit, and the icebergs have melted. We are in two chairs. We don’t speak. We just look at each other. My whole happiness lies in just seeing her there, very close. I can touch her, she is real. Words hardly seem necessary. After fifteen years it is not a dream. If I look up her father will look down. Out of a tall frame over the fireplace. He watches, too, he listens. A tall, thin, grey-haired, strikingly handsome man. That’s where she gets it from, I think, surely. First the handsome man, and then the beautiful child. Only the hint of a smile on this face, the hint of an acceptance, as though what he already holds might not be quite enough. Eyes like his daughter’s, big, wide open, frank, but hard as flints. A powerful-looking creature, and the face always a striking contrast to his woman’s hands. Splendid hands. The little finger of the right hand curls like a trap over the whip handle, and it tells you that he always held it. The silent Colonel.

  “�
��Have you heard from your father yet, Sheila?’ I asked. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘To-morrow, perhaps, the mail is always slow in these parts. It’s a little too soon.’

  “I looked up at the Colonel again. ‘Perhaps a little too late,’ I thought, and I could even see her letter arriving at the London hotel, see him opening it, hear him reading the first two words, ‘Dear Daddy’, watch his face as he read the last two, ‘come back’. I can even see his eyes closing against the innocence of it, the trust of it, I can see the lips curling back at the very thought of it.

  “‘You think he’ll come then?’

  “‘Of course. Why not?’

  “I looked up yet again, at those eyes, those hands, and I think how wise he was to get out. ‘You honestly believe that your father will come back and live here, just for the asking?’

  “I knelt down, I took her hands. I pressed them together. ‘You really do believe it,’ I said, ‘you really do.’

  “‘Why shouldn’t he? It’s his home. I’m his daughter. It was always his home,’ she said. I buried my head in her lap, I smiled. I thought, ‘Surely she’s only pretending, it’s just a game.’ I felt her stroking my hair. My happiness is almost uncontainable. I threw my arms about her, and even then no words were necessary. It is understood.

  “‘What are you thinking about?’ she said. ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘just this’, but I was, I was thinking, about her father. Perhaps Daddy is wiser, and maybe wiser still if he can stretch out his ears and listen to the day he is living in. How clever of him to go, at the time, whilst the going was good, before the exodus began, before the sparks showed, before the flames shot up. ‘Wise Downey,’ I thought, ‘clever Downey.’ Out before the crack came, the burdensome, and too surprising sound of Paddy waking up in the bog, stretching his bent back, looking round, and wondering which part of his country was his own. Doesn’t she understand? Hasn’t she a clue? Any clue? Didn’t she ever find out? How much does she know, want to, how much does she understand? Or wasn’t the Gelton mud quite deep enough? Something’s finished, I told myself. I looked into her eyes, I asked a question. ‘And what happens if he turns up?’

  “‘Who?’ she asked. My God! She hasn’t even a clue. She’s dreaming, like I was, she’s playing in the garden after the guests have gone, after the lights are out.

  “‘Who? Desmond of course. He might come. Mightn’t he? He is your husband, and you’re his wife,’ I said.

  “She gave me the most extraordinary look, I shut my eyes against it. I thought she’d cry, I couldn’t look, and I realized that even now there was a pull, a strong pull, a terrible pull. I saw her sorry, I could even hear her crying. I smothered her face in my shoulder.

  “‘There isn’t anybody else except your father, Sheila, and why should he want to come back here if he thought it wiser to get out when he did. I’m sure he didn’t go just because your mother depressed him, because he couldn’t have half the young girls from Cork queueing up by his bed. Oh God! Don’t you understand, dear, can’t you see, won’t you come away with me?’

  “There is no answer, and there are more words, and I can’t prevent them from coming out. ‘Your father’s not the only one, Sheila. You know that, now don’t you? Others had their ears to the ground about the same time. It’s the end of something, whether one likes it or not, it is the end. Why, even old Miss Fetch knows it, I’m sure she does, though she says nothing. What can they come back to? The good old days? They’re out, right out, I ask you? What? Look around. Go up and down this country. Look at the tombs, all empty, and perhaps even the rats have gone, too. Where are his friends? They’ve gone as well. Too much cargo, they ought to lighten the ship. What a ship. Well, look at it? Look at it now. One time it was just English landlords, and now there’s even a bit of green to it, a few Irish ones as well. Why won’t you come, Sheila?’

  “‘Where?’

  “I hadn’t even thought about it. I drew her down by her hair, I looked into her eyes. This woman is still beautiful, and I still love her, and I still want her. I can never see her here, I can see her only in Gelton. Nowhere else. I can see her walking its endless roads, trudging along its streets, in the places where she first learned to grow up. I can see her in line with the others, I can see her feeling very lonely, very strange in another life. And never afraid, and following her husband, the one she wanted, following behind him, walking beside him, pushing with him, to live, living. But not this. Christ! Not this. I look up at this man, tight in his frame, tight in his life, behind his frontier, but I cannot see his daughter, she is somewhere else, being tried in Gelton. I can see this man bent only in moments, humbled only by hours shared by God Almighty and his priest. Paddy will bend elsewhere. I look at him again, I keep looking at him.

  “First it was felt, very slowly felt, and then it was suddenly known, like a great shout, and everybody is looking upwards, for the damned scales have shot skywards, and have never balanced, they never could, the weight is on one side, has been for years, for ages, for too long. He got out, he’s out, lucky Colonel. Perhaps he thought that everything could explode except life, and he never once thought of Paddy yawning in the bog. Sucked at, sucked up, sucked dry. That’s how it was, and I told her that.

  “‘They’re not even wanted back here,’ I said. ‘None of them. Good riddance. Everybody knows. Opening up Rath Na is dreaming, playing the game with shut eyes.’ The way she looks at me, perhaps she thinks I’m crazy. It’s another time, and she knows it is, no longer soft, but hard as bloody iron. This damned country has been exporting Celtic twilight for centuries. If she tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about I’ll lose my eyebrows. They’ll drop off.

  “‘We all know, Sheila, my family knows, you know. Why don’t you turn your back on the whole damned lot of it and come away with me? We can be happy somewhere else, we can live. This will end up like the rest of them, it couldn’t do anything else. And think of the money, the cost of it all.’

  “I look at her hand, the one that wrote the note, that struck the match for me and lighted the lamp, the one that showed me the door that wasn’t closed. What I always remember about her is that she never forgot me, not once in all that time. I told her again, for the hundredth time. ‘No matter what is said, no matter what I do, I shall always remember that, Sheila. I shall never forget it, I couldn’t. It’s inside, it’s nailed down.’ I talk like a parrot, I say again that there is nobody else, and there isn’t. I am glad she has left her husband. Glad. I bent back her head. I said, ‘Can’t you say something?’ I shut my eyes, I waited for the answer.

  “‘It’s not simple like that,’ she said.

  “‘It’s simple enough to me,’ I said.

  “‘Where should we go? What should we do?’

  “‘Somewhere! Something.’ I am back on that boat, her note shut in my hand, and I watch another piece of paper toss in black water, before the horn blew, before the boat sailed. I wait for the answer.

  “‘When you sent that note to the ship, Sheila, had you then left him?’

  “‘A fortnight before that,’ she said.

  “‘Where did you go?’

  “‘Does it matter?’

  “I never answered, I knew she was right, it didn’t matter.

  “‘D’you think he’ll follow you over here?’

  “‘No.’

  “‘How sure are you that he won’t?’

  “‘I know he won’t.’

  “‘How do you know?’

  “‘Because he wouldn’t care,’ she said.

  “‘Can I talk about him?’

  “‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said.

  “‘But can I? Without hurting you? I won’t if you don’t want to.’

  “‘I feel so sick of everything, so utterly weary. I’m torn in two.’

  “I shut my eyes, I was quite unable to speak. Her father stood there, imperious on his canvas, he can look down at us both; if he wants to he can enjoy himself. ‘Don’t cry,’ I said.

&n
bsp; “‘No,’ she said, and cried.

  “‘I only want you to be happy,’ I said. It’s all I can say. All I want to. I feel this woman heavy on my shoulder, in my arms. But I am looking over her head, towards the window, watching the light go, wishing it gone, thinking of darkness and curtains, thinking of the room again, the bed. My senses tyrannise me. I was pressing her down. I was feeling her yield. Only the creak of floor-boards above my head reminds me that there is another world, and I think of Miss Fetch proceeding on her infernal duties. I just wait for the light to go. ‘Let’s go up,’ I said.

  “We went up.”

  “Now it won’t matter whether I go up or she comes down.”

  He was still seated at the table, his head low on his breast, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. He did not hear the door opening, did not see Miss Fetch peep in. She looked at the sitting man. She spoke.

  “Is Mrs. Fury not down yet then?” she asked. He had not seemed to hear, and she took two paces into the room and shut the door after her. “Is there anything else you’ll be wanting?” she asked, and only then did he move, look up, see her standing almost beside him. “What did you say, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s very late, it’s turned ten o’clock. Has Mrs. Fury not come down?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Is there anything else you’ll be wanting? And as this room is being done out to-day, will you remember to use the diningroom from lunch onwards?”

  “I shan’t forget,” he said.

  “Mrs. Fury is never as late as this. Perhaps I ought to take something up to her.”

  “Yes, do that.”

  Something in his demeanour puzzled her. “Are you all right, sir?”