by James Hanley
ROYALTY BUILDINGS, GELTON, C. 2.
DEAR MAUREEN,—This is a surprise, I know. It must be the first letter I’ve ever written since I was in Ireland four years ago. I’ve been having pangs of conscience since you called. In fact, I’ve been worrying about this matter. I wonder if you would care to call on me at this office, where I can be found at any time between nine and one and half-past two and four? I want to have a talk with you, not only about this pressing need of yours, but about other things besides. Please let me know what day and what time, as this week ends our quarter, and we have a committee meeting here, and audit the books of the Branch. I remain, Your fond brother, DESMOND.
P.S.—The office is closed all day on Saturday.—D.
‘Well, now! Fancy that,’ said Maureen. She rolled the letter into a ball and flung it violently towards the ceiling.
‘The mean pig! Well, it’s too much to expect. Really. And he’s actually becoming thoughtful, and considerate.’
One thing was plain. Anna Ragner was not going to wait. She got up and dressed. She took the child down, and fed him. Then she washed and dressed him and laid him in the cradle. It was her habit to go out each morning with the child and spend about an hour in the Morton Gardens. This morning this must be ruled out. The child seemed contented. He lay in the cradle, made dark by the large wooden hood which Mr. Kilkey had himself added, and played with his fingers. There was not much work to do. Maureen always kept her house clean and tidy. Joe was out all day. There seemed no obstacles in her path to-day. Satisfied that Dermod would lie contentedly for the next hour, she went upstairs again, and immediately began to undress. She stood naked whilst she pulled first one article, then another, from the tightly packed bottom drawer of the dressing-table, whose varnish had almost disappeared, showing up the poor wood and poorer workmanship of the furniture. This was the only drawer that could be used. The others always stuck half-way.
Now and again she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and experienced a certain thrill as she beheld her still comely figure, the well-seated shoulders, the firm breasts, and the long white arms, whose whiteness ceased just below the elbow. She could afford to smile at herself, for her early life at the jute factory had not destroyed her features or her shape. There was still a freshness about her, her femininity had remained inviolate. Neither factory work nor married life had affected it. Except for dark rings beneath her eyes, she had hardly changed. And as she looked at her white body, and ran her hands down her thighs, she thought to herself, ‘How Aunt Brigid could say I’ve become coarsened I can’t understand.’
She put it down to nothing more or less than shortsightedness on that stout lady’s part, at the same time remembering that her description of Mr. Joseph Kilkey coincided with her own.
‘I haven’t changed. I’m just the same.’ She smiled at herself in the glass. Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘God! What I hate is his kindness. His infernal softness.’
She began to dress. She powdered her face, sprinkled some cheap scent on her corsage, and took a last glance at her hair.
If Maureen Kilkey was vain, it was certain that her vanity reached its height when she ran her hand through the golden-brown cloud of her hair, which in the clear light of day resembled burnished copper. Those pictures she saw in the dust-filmed glass of the dressing-table, how clearly they mirrored the essential truths, the truths she had always endeavoured to stifle and hide from sight.
By the very act of stripping herself naked, and of beholding herself in that mirror, of running a reddened hand through that cloud of red-gold hair, she had disturbed the calm waters of an acquiescence beneath which lurked those noisy, turbulent, and darkened waters of unrest. She broke the surface of that still lake, and now her spirit recoiled. She realized now that she was twenty-eight, twenty-four years younger than her husband. She realized he was old, ugly, generous, honest, contented, and that there was Dermod. She had disturbed those waters, and as she stood there looking at her figure in the glass, she was filled with a strange and passionate longing. Something called to her. But now it was too late. She was no longer free. There was the child. She drew back from the mirror, an expression of absolute disgust upon her face. She went downstairs.
The twelve-months-old child still played in the cradle, made strange gurgling noises, and sucked first one thumb and then the other. Mrs. Kilkey went out the back way, and knocking at her neighbour’s house, asked if Mrs. Crilly was in. That lady came to the door. She had just got up. Her hair was in curlers, her face dirty, and eyes still heavy with sleep.
‘Oh,’ said Maureen. ‘Good-morning, Mrs. Crilly. I was wondering whether you’d take the cradle in for about an hour. I have to go to town on business.’
She looked so anxiously at the woman that the latter exclaimed, ‘Is it important business?’ and looked curiously at the docker’s wife all dressed up in her best, and, ‘My, what lovely scent, Mrs. Kilkey!’
‘Yes. It’s only for about an hour.’ Her impatience took the form of a steady drumming of her knuckles upon the back door.
Mrs. Crilly looked back up the yard, and called, ‘Dinah! Dinah!’ at which summons a girl of about sixteen appeared at the top of the yard. She, like her mother, appeared to have just woke up from a heavy sleep. Her hair, too, was in curlers, and her slovenly dress only served to enhance her slovenliness of figure, a figure that seemed without bones at all, fat and shapeless.
‘Will you bring in Mrs. Kilkey’s cradle, Dinah?’
‘Yes, Ma,’ replied the girl, and went next door with Maureen.
There was no need for Mrs. Kilkey to offer any help, for the girl picked up the cradle and child, her chest swelling with the exertion so that one could see the heavy breasts move as she clasped the cradle in her arms. Then she carried it into the house.
‘Thank you,’ said Maureen, and took a sixpence from her purse. ‘It’s awfully good of you. Will you give Dinah this sixpence?’ and she put the coin into Mrs. Crilly’s hard and shiny palm.
‘Thank you,’ she said again, and went back to the house.
At five minutes to nine she went out.
On the King’s Road she caught a tram going east. At a quarter past twelve she was climbing the three long flights of stairs to Desmond Fury’s little office in the Royalty Building.
She did not hurry, indeed she seemed quite leisurely, and apparently indifferent to the fact that Mrs. Crilly might be wondering what had happened.
Desmond Fury was very busy this morning. He was stamping cards, entering up sums ranging from sixpence to five and ninepence in the ledger. When he had stamped a score of cards, he copied the amounts of the last payments in them, and wrote them in the ledger. He worked like a robot, whilst his mind was filled with various and conflicting thoughts.
There was the meeting of the Branch at the Assembly Rooms the next evening, the auditing of the accounts in the office earlier on the same day, and there was the all-important question of a further effort at representation on the Gelton Council.
Whilst he wrote and stamped, he gave consideration to these matters. Maureen’s possible visit was far from his mind. He had indeed forgotten all about it. Pressure of work, a tiff at home with his wife, and the faintest suspicion about a matter involving his future and his happiness, were thoughts of a disturbing character, but these now lay hidden away beneath what he considered at this very moment to be the most important one of all. That was a clear balance sheet, a vote of confidence, and a generous approval of his work.
Occasionally he smiled as he went on with his work, and deep down he could feel a sort of delicious anticipation about the coming meeting.
They could not deny, even Mr. Johns who was so suspicious of him, they could not deny that he had filled the position not only with great credit to himself but to the Branch also and it might be—yes, it might certainly be—that in the end he, he, Desmond Fury, would even have his candidature for municipal honours put to the vote.
The cards were all stamped now. He p
iled them together, bound them with an elastic band, and placed them in the drawer in front of him. He took a last look at the big book, blotted it, and closed it. This he also put in the desk. Thoughts of his work now receded with the same speed at which those stamped cards and ledger had disappeared into the drawer.
He sat back in the chair, raised his arms above his head, and yawned. He relaxed, drew a cigarette from his case, lighted it, and with head thrown back sent blue rings of smoke towards the almost black ceiling of the office. And as the smoke curled upwards, Desmond Fury’s thoughts also took wing and soared upwards.
‘Maybe I’m wrong, entirely wrong, about Sheila,’ he was thinking now. ‘And yet I can’t help being suspicious. But I’ve made the bargain, so I must stand by my word. But, God! I wish I knew what was behind it. Sometimes she’s too loving. It does make me think things.’
Yes. One couldn’t help thinking things, even about one for whom one had the deepest, sincerest, and most passionate love.
‘Perhaps I was born like that. A suspicious cow. But I’m so afraid—so afraid that just one wrong word, just one wrong thing said or done, will upset everything.’ He flung the cigarette into the black grate, already studded with matches and cigarette-ends.
‘Aye! One time I used to be suspicious about her going out, and now I’m suspicious because she doesn’t go out. I may be a queer beggar, but isn’t it strange? She’s so changeable. So changeable. Of course, one can see what kind of family she comes from. I suppose I must thank my lucky stars I married a woman as lovely as Sheila. But this keeping to my bargain. Christ! I’m getting tired of it. It’s like being a little dog at the end of a string. Why won’t she tell me all about herself? Is she just playing a game? Finding me amusing. Ah! Blast it—she will never tell me anything. She’s cleverer than I am. That’s what makes me bloody mad. I can’t get to the bottom of her at all. What’s she afraid of? Is she so ashamed of herself that she just hates me knowing anything? Hang it all! All this mystery is getting on my nerves. Mystery! A bloody farce. She knows I’m afraid. That’s what it is. She can do anything with me. Well, maybe I’m an ignorant, suspicious man, but if she’s so clever as she makes out, she can’t have any two opinions as to what I think of her. But if only she’d say it. No. She never does. All right in bed. They’re all O.K. there, but that’s not everything. If I only knew she really loved me deeply—aye, for good and all. God! Nothing would stop me. Nothing. I’ll get on to that council. Yes. I’ll shake those lazy swine up, and then, aye, and then——’
There was a tiny sound behind him, a finger tapping on the glass door, and Desmond Fury swung round.
‘Come in!’ he called out. ‘Come in!’
One could gather at once that he was perturbed by this sudden invasion of his contemplative half-hour. He shouted once more, ‘Come in! Come in!’ Apparently the visitor was deaf. ‘Oh, hell!’ he said under his breath. ‘Three times I asked that damn fool below to bring some paint up here and letter that window with “Come in.” This is no damned banker’s private office. Anybody is free to see what goes on here.’ He kicked the chair from his path, and flung open the door.
‘Why, Maureen! You’re early,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Come in! Do come in.’ He caught her hands. ‘How are you, Maureen? Well, it hardly seems worth while my asking. You look so well. So pretty too. Well! Well! Clothes make all the difference, don’t they?’
He pulled her in, and kicked the door shut. Then he got a chair, planted it down opposite his own, and said, ‘Sit down, Maury, what can I do for you? No. That’s bloody swank. Well! Well! I’m glad you came. I like to see you, even though we haven’t always got on very well together. Eh! But we did once, didn’t we, Maury?’
He leaned forward, smiling into her face. ‘I mean in the good old days, you know. Dad on the grand hike across the United States, and Mother doing the washing for the Heraghtys. You know. School in the morning, after black tea with hard crusts soaked in it, and pea-soup for dinner, and rhubarb jam for tea. Still, we were happy then—weren’t we, Maureen? Very happy really. Dad’s return from his wanderings seemed to put the spoke in everybody’s wheel. I was thinking of Mother yesterday. You know I met her in a store last week buying a little toy for your baby. Well! Maury, I’m sorry for Mother, though you probably wouldn’t believe it. But you see, if we didn’t understand one another so well I wouldn’t be able to say it. So you got my letter.’
‘Yes. I got your letter,’ said Mrs. Kilkey. ‘It’s awfully hot here, isn’t it?’ She threw open her coat, and continued ‘I don’t know how on earth you work here on a hot day. Can’t you open the window?’
She rose as though to open the little window herself, but Desmond laughed, saying, ‘You’ll have to break it, for the man who built this place evidently supposed the occupants could bring up daily supplies of oxygen. Besides, there’s four iron bars. I often look at those bars, Maureen. They seem to mean something to me. And of course our working men’s organization would be closeted up here. One of these days we won’t have any more bars to look through. Understand what I mean?’ concluded Desmond. He lighted another cigarette.
Mrs. Kilkey didn’t seem to see his point at all. Indeed, judging by the expression upon her face, she wasn’t even interested in anything, except perhaps to survey her eldest brother from head to heel, and to notice how well dressed he was, how he looked after his hair. ‘He must even shave every day,’ she thought. And that brand-new suit, those light grey socks and brown shoes. And that watch and chain. She was quite certain it was a gold one.
‘I’ve found it a damned sight hotter swinging a hammer in the Length,’ remarked Desmond, during an awkward pause in the conversation. But it was obvious his sister wasn’t at all interested. He could feel her eyes upon him, and he knew the minute examination to which his person was being subjected. Then quite suddenly she ceased to look at him. Her eyes began wandering around the room, looking at nothing in particular, though her extreme sense of tidiness forced her to make a grimace as she espied the grate almost littered with dead matches, pieces of paper, cigarette-ends, broken match-boxes, little balls of blotting-paper, and inside the grate a number of discarded pen-nibs.
‘Yes. It is a mess,’ said Desmond laughingly. ‘One wants a woman about the place. But I’m so busy, and you know we’re not like most tenants in this building, we can’t afford the luxury of a charwoman to clean out.’
Maureen said quickly, ‘Can’t you clean it out yourself?’
‘Is this the person who has called for help?’ he thought. Mr. Desmond Fury was a little disappointed. This was an altogether different Maureen from the one who had implored his help but a few days previously. He was now asking himself why he had bothered to write at all. After all, he had vowed never to have anything more to do with his family. His conduct, like his mother’s, had been based on an assumption that the woman he had married was a person—well, no—he hated to think of all they had said about her. And now here she was, this sister, the second time he had seen her since his marriage.
‘I wonder if she’ll create a scene in the building to-day?’ he was asking himself as he eyed her up and down. She seemed so composed, so self-assured. Not a trace of anxiety upon that face, and how uncommonly well she was looking to-day. All dressed up for the occasion too. Yes. She really looked splendid. Like the rest of the family, she had simply ceased to exist, and now here she was, alive and in the flesh.
It brought back to him memories of his early days in Hatfields. ‘What a long time it is,’ he was thinking, ‘since I rose at six to go to that timber works, and she got up at half-past to go to work in that jute factory.’ Nothing had changed except that they were getting older. The world hadn’t changed. Hatfields was still the same. It had altered neither its shape nor its opinion.
‘She hasn’t altered much, though,’ he thought, ‘a little stouter perhaps, and her voice has gone quite hard like that of a man, and she has developed such a comic way of looking at people. Women are fu
nny creatures.’
The way she looked at him now, as though he were nothing in particular, part of the furniture so to speak, as though he hadn’t any right in the office at all.
‘Well, and how do you like my office?’ he asked her.
‘It’s awful stuffy,’ Maureen remarked.
‘This is the depot for all miseries, and all hopes,’ he said. ‘Tell me something about yourself. There’s lots of things I want to ask you. I sit here every day, and people come and go. Men out of work, wives whose husbands are ill, or orphans whose fathers have been killed on the job. And the things they say—the tales they tell. But that’s just what makes this job so interesting, Maureen. I’m thinking of going in for the Council soon. You know, our industry hasn’t a single member on the Gelton Council.’
A flood of questions followed.
How was his mother? Was old Pettigrew still alive, and Father Moynihan still preaching his dope at St. Sebastian’s? And how were the Postlethwaites getting on? Well? All of which questions Mrs. Kilkey answered by a slight nod of the head. They seemed to bore her, judging by the change of expression on her features. But when Desmond mentioned his younger brother, she was all attention.
‘I’ve often wondered how he was getting on?’ Desmond said. ‘I haven’t seen him since that lamentable strike. How is he getting along?’
‘Didn’t you know he’d been to sea?’ asked Maureen, the while her instinct told her he was simply groping for an opening. ‘I thought you knew all that.’