by James Hanley
‘Well, I didn’t. I heard a thing or two. One hears things in the most extraordinary way. In fact, a chap I used to work with even told me that he met him in the street late one night. He was standing waiting for a car, and my wife was with him. Of course I just laughed. Why should I take any notice of what people say? Remember the things they used to say about us when we lived in Vulcan Street?’
‘How is she? We’ve never met. What does she look like, Desmond?’
Desmond Fury slapped his knee. ‘Oh! She’s fine. She looks lovely. Oh aye! We’re going great guns now. I’ve often felt sorry Mother wouldn’t see her. Still, this religion, you know,’ he laughed. ‘But all this isn’t getting down to the point, is it?’ he wound up with a great flourish of the hands. ‘We must talk about you.’ And after a while he could not help but add, ‘You don’t look very worried about the matter, Maureen, whatever it is.’ He got out of the chair.
‘Listen! Let’s go below. We’ll have a little lunch together.’ He took her arm, but Maureen was already on her feet.
‘It’s so difficult to talk here,’ continued Desmond. ‘And you see, I’m a busy man, and this is the only time of the day I can be off.’ He put his hand on the gas-tap. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she replied.
They went out together into the draughty corridor. They walked slowly down, Desmond’s hand resting on his sister’s shoulder.
‘By God! I was wise when I decided to get away from Vulcan Street. I’ve never looked back since that day, and things are swinging into line quickly, Maureen.’ He leaned over her, inhaling the perfume of the cheap scent from her blouse. ‘I won’t be satisfied until I get into Parliament. Careful. There’s a hole in this stair.’ He swung her clear of it, and they reached the second floor.
‘Gloomy hole, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘But that’s only lack of funds. You see, if we had a bigger branch we could have a bigger office, somewhere on the ground floor. Of course, it’s cheap where we are, and it suits for the time being, but it’s the gas I hate! Never any bloody daylight. The gas has to burn all day. It’s the cheapest office in the whole building, and if it hadn’t been for me we wouldn’t have been here at all. We’re climbing, but slowly.’
They were on the ground floor.
‘There’s a little café in the basement of the building. We can get a nice business man’s lunch for a bob. You ought to see the fellows who come here for shilling lunches. Heads of companies, solicitors’ clerks, managers, even office-boys. And when they’ve had their lunch they play dominoes. Just think of that. Dominoes.’ He pushed open the café door, and they went inside.
‘There’s not much harm in that,’ said Maureen.
They found a table and sat down. It had a brown marble top, and was smeared with splashes of cold tea. Desmond ordered the lunches.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Tell us all about it, Maureen.’
At the very hour when Maureen Kilkey and her brother were closeted in the café beneath Royalty Building, Mr. Corkran, general factotum at Banfield House, was going through his ablutions. Nobody was more shocked at the lateness of the hour than the gentleman himself, for usually he rose about six, to indulge in what he called his walk along the main deck, the main deck being that stretch of road in front of the pickle factory. Reasons other than health sent Mr. Corkran out, for at this hour in the morning the girls who worked at the factory were passing down that very stretch of road.
This departure from custom was due to a rather late night. Mrs. Ragner, for some strange reason known only to herself, had wanted the ledger accounts gone through. And what seemed even more unusual was the fact that Mrs. Ragner had decided upon this at an hour when she was usually in bed. They had begun some minutes after Peter Fury had left the house.
Mrs. Ragner did not allow this departure from custom to interfere with her at all. She rose at the usual time, had breakfast, already cooked by Mr. Corkran, and had left promptly at ten minutes past nine for her town office, comfortably seated in the cab.
Mr. Corkran felt a little annoyed—he had actually appeared with Mrs. Ragner’s breakfast looking nothing like the punctilious gentleman of the night before, for his beard was strong and grew very fast.
Already he had cut himself twice, and his quiff kept falling over one eye and hampering execution with the razor. From time to time he dipped the brush in the lather, smothered the lower part of his face with it, and then gave the razor another touch on the stone.
‘I can’t understand her at all,’ he kept saying to himself. ‘I’ve never seen a woman change her mind so often in the course of an hour. First she wants me to distrain on the Kilkeys, and then she suddenly says, “No! I’ll wait a bit longer.” Then she says, “I think, in fact, it might not be a bad idea to make out a renewal contract and call on Mrs. Fury.”’
This latter was the most worrying. The first suggestion did certainly sound like Mrs. Ragner, but the second—it rather sounded like Father Christmas.
‘No! I’ve known her too long. And now I know her so well, so thoroughly, I simply can’t understand.’
A certain thought did now and again force its way into the general flow, but Mr. Corkran quickly swamped it, for the simple reason that he hated to harbour it even for a single moment.
‘It’s rather silly of me even to think of such a thing. Even now she’s said nothing definite. I’ll have to ring her up. She’ll only swear if I don’t remind her. Ah! What would she do without me? She wouldn’t have her money or her power for five minutes. No. She’ll just have to listen to me. I haven’t been here all these years for nothing. I haven’t slaved for her for nothing. She’s getting soft, that’s what it is. And you can’t do it. You just can’t do it. Not in this world, anyhow. The fool! She must be blind if she can’t see that her money and I are all she has, and all she ever will have.’
Mr. Corkran, having satisfied himself by a thorough inspection of his face in the glass, put down the razor and went to the kitchen sink to wash. There was a bathroom, but that was sacred ground, and he never thought of washing where Mrs. Ragner had washed. His place was the kitchen, and there he was going to stay.
Having washed, he went upstairs to his room and started to dress. He had one leg in his trousers when he suddenly realized he must phone. Drawing on the other leg, he ran down into the hall and rang up Mrs. Ragner.
‘Mrs. Ragner is out at lunch,’ came the reply. ‘Who is speaking?’
‘Corkran speaking from the house. Please tell Mrs. Ragner I rang up at three minutes to twelve.’
He put down the receiver and went back into the kitchen. He made some cocoa, cut some bread and butter, and commenced his meal. Then the bell rang. He went to the front door. A woman wearing a shawl was standing on the step. She had a child by her side. She looked at the half-dressed man and asked, ‘Is Mrs. Ragner in?’
‘No! She isn’t in,’ snapped Mr. Corkran—quite unused to attending to callers at this hour of the day, and he was swinging the door to, when the woman promptly put her foot in it, and remarked:
‘Well, you’ll do, you’re the same as her, no doubt. Here’s Mrs. O’Hara’s cards. They picked her out of the river the other night.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Corkran, taking the greasy-looking envelope from the woman’s hand. ‘So glad you called. I’ll see Mrs. Ragner gets them all right.’ And without another word he slammed the door in her face.
An irritability that had existed since half-past five that morning now came to a head with that violent slamming of the door. Nothing but the peculiar ideas of Anna Ragner had caused it. Mr. Corkran was a gentleman at peace with the whole world, and was content to remain so if only Mrs. Ragner decided to be sensible. And she certainly wasn’t being that. Indeed, she seemed to have lost hold on things. He hoped this state of affairs would not be of long duration.
At a quarter to one he rang the office again. Mrs. Ragner was still out. He had an engagement at the court, but a phone message from the town office had alread
y cancelled that. Mrs. Ragner had informed him that she would look after that herself. Why shouldn’t he feel perturbed? It certainly looked as though she didn’t trust him—he who had done all her work these many years. Only the greatest respect for his mistress had prevented him from speaking plainly that very morning.
He was sitting in the kitchen again. He had cleaned down the house, washed his clothes, as well as Mrs. Ragner’s, and thoroughly cleaned out the clients’ big room.
There was the evening meal to be got, and that seemed about all, until the night callers began to arrive.
He leaned his elbows on the bare wooden table, and rested his head on his hands.
‘I hate even to harbour the thought, but it looks as though she does really distrust me. But what have I done?’ Mr. Corkran was asking himself, when the telephone bell rang. Immediately he ran out into the hall.
‘Hello! Corkran speaking.’
‘That you, Corkran?’ came the voice of Anna Ragner on the phone. ‘You can cancel that visit to Price Street. Mrs. Kilkey has just left here, and we have come to an arrangement.’ There was a pause.
‘A woman has just called here,’ blurted out Mr. Corkran. ‘She’s brought the O’Hara cards in. It seems Mrs. O’Hara has met with an accident, from which she has since died. I——’
‘Oh dear,’ came back the voice. ‘Well, you’d better make a note of that and attach the cards to the promissory note. You’ll find it in the H’s in the safe in the small sitting-room. It’s awkward. However, we can’t do anything now.’
To Mr. Corkran the voice sounded almost bitter. He was speaking again.
‘Hello! Are you there? Still speaking. I rang you this morning about this Hatfields matter. I spent the best part of an hour copying out that renewal document. Do you still wish me to call at Mrs. Fury’s, or do you wish to leave it over as you decided late last night?’
His hard horny hand began to shake as though from a sudden fit of impatience. It certainly looked as though Mr. Corkran might crush the instrument into powder, such was the tensity of his hold upon the receiver.
‘Oh! I think I must consider that, Corkran. I’ll ring you up later. I thought you would be pleased to know that I was awarded costs this morning in that Felton case.’
‘Oh, very good, mam. Very good. I’m very glad to hear it. Well, I shall be right here the moment you ring through. I can’t do anything until you do,’ and he put down the receiver.
For the third time he went back into the kitchen and waited.
‘I’m rather puzzled,’ he said aloud. ‘And I’d be a fool not to admit it. Why does she suddenly want to renew this loan—why, a single glance at the book would show her it’s asking for trouble. Perhaps she thinks they’ve come into money.’
It was puzzling, this sudden turning off of the screw, this withdrawal of the finger from the button.
‘I’m sure she’s not right. Certain of it.’
Moved by a curious thought, he went out of the kitchen and made his way to Anna Ragner’s private room and went straight to the wall where the safe was. It was locked. One could not see it until the small curtain was drawn back. He heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I was a fool ever to think she’d leave it unlocked. Still, she said such queer things last night.’ He had every conceivable right to come here and inspect it. Closing the door, he went up to her room.
Moved by the same curiosity as that which had sent him to inspect the safe, he turned the knob of the door and looked in. Then he went inside and closed the door. The very air of the room radiated femininity. He sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. Then he looked around the room.
‘She’s a sight more untidy than I am,’ was his first thought, as his eyes fell upon the heavy mahogany dressing-table, littered with scent-bottles, packets open and packets unopened, from which the fragrance of various shampoo-powders exhaled. The mirror-glass was spotted here and there by flecks of a pinkish-white powder.
‘This is where she stands and looks at herself,’ said Mr. Corkran to himself. ‘This is where she dresses and where she undresses. This is where she lies,’ he tapped the bed with his finger, ‘and here she sits and thinks and lies and thinks. H’m!’ He turned round and looked at the table at the side of the bed. He picked up a cheap French novel by Paul de Kock, two copies of La Vie Parisienne, a Jewish illustrated weekly. He smiled as he turned the pages. He put them down and picked up two books: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens, and Hereward the Wake. Judging by their whorled surface, there could be no doubt that Mrs. Anna Ragner had read them, and read them thoroughly. Mr. Corkran was very much surprised indeed. There were some old envelopes lying at his hand. One was marked, ‘Bank of England. Private.’ The other had a foreign stamp on it, and Mr. Corkran flicked it back upon the table in an attitude of extreme disgust. The curtains on the window were dirty. ‘That’s funny,’ thought Mr. Corkran. ‘She’s never asked for them to be washed.’
He stood up and surveyed the room from floor to ceiling. What was there about the room that made the factotum stand there, hand to his mouth, exclaiming to himself, ‘You’d never think Anna Ragner had ever been there.’ Anna Ragner indeed must be two persons in one. For this room breathed nothing but a sort of delicious feminine fragrance. It certainly did not breathe the power which Mr. Corkran knew she possessed. It was as though she flung off this power before she entered the room. It was a woman’s room. But it didn’t seem quite right to the factotum. Apart from that single envelope marked, ‘Bank of England. Private,’ there was not a single thread of evidence of what she really was.
‘It doesn’t look like a moneylender’s room at all. Well, she can’t hide away from me very much longer. If she thinks she is as powerful as all that, she’s wrong, for by sheer slavery I’ve sucked it out of her. No, Anna! You and I must learn now, once and for all, how well we understand each other. But the way she looked at me when I showed that person out of the house last night, I thought she was going to devour me.’
He was still standing there when the telephone rang again, and ‘I wonder if she’s made up her mind?’ he said to himself as he hurried down to the hall. He put his ear to the telephone, and spoke softly over the wire.
‘Hello! Corkran speaking.’
‘I have thought over this matter of the woman in Hatfields. I think you might go down there and suggest a renewal of the loan, but don’t press the matter. You might, however—and I think it would be wise to do so—you might take a look over things, and bring me back a proper return of ingoing wages. Well, you tell Mrs. Fury that I must repeat what I said in my note: that I’m very much surprised that I was not notified of her husband’s change of employment.’
‘I had already thought of that, mam,’ replied Mr. Corkran.
He heard a laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Yes, yes, but I cannot always be praising you for your foresight, Corkran. I shall return at six o’clock.’
‘Very well, mam,’ but there was only a metallic thump in the man’s ear as the woman put down the receiver.
‘Well, that’s much better,’ said Mr. Corkran. ‘Now we know where we are. I thought for a moment she’d gone pure winneck over that Fury loan,’ and he hurried upstairs to change. He drew off his dirty dungaree trousers, and put on his black ones. In a few minutes he was ready, completely dressed in black, wearing a newly starched linen collar and blue tie. He went down into the kitchen, carrying his hard hat and a clothes-brush. After a vigorous brushing of the hat, he once more applied vaseline to his hair, in order to keep the quiff in place. Then he trimmed his moustaches, first stroking some pomade into them. Having satisfied himself as to externals, he now thought of internals. Mr. Corkran never went out on business without fortifying himself with a hot toddy, no matter what season of the year it was. Hot rum-and-milk was a good foundation, and there was delicate work ahead.
‘Sometimes I wonder if she realizes how her clientele has increased only through me. I wonder.’
He lighted a thin cheroot, and went out to se
e that all bars, bolts, and chains were affixed. These had never been disturbed, for the three back doors had never once been opened in all the years that Mr. Corkran had lived there. Mrs. Ragner and he always used the front door. It showed at least that they considered their calling and place in the world as honourable as the next-door neighbour.
‘It’s the clients that hang their heads, not us,’ he once remarked to Mrs. Ragner, and she had replied, ‘Yes. One would think we dispensed poison instead of money.’
He went from room to room inspecting the windows, saw the various drawers were locked. Then he went into the hall. All now seemed secure. He should probably be back about four—barring events, of course. There were always events. Then he opened the big front door, and shutting it with a terrific bang he surveyed it, vigorously rattled the knob, and, satisfied that everything was in order, sauntered down the steps.
‘What a glorious day it is!’ he said to himself, smiling approval at the sun, at which he flung a furtive eye, as though at any moment it were threatening to fall on him, and continued on his way until he reached the stretch of road which he looked upon as his promenade, when he came to a halt and gazed steadily at the many windows of the pickle factory, some open, some shut, at which he could see girls working. It was one of Mr. Corkran’s pleasures in life to stand here on every occasion on which he left the house, and focus an approving eye upon the many female forms, either behind the closed window or in front of the open ones.
After a few minutes he went on. Like the girls in the factory, the world that spread out before him was there for him to see, and the long journey downhill into Instone Road was occupied in pursuing these usual pleasures, which ranged from standing looking into shop windows to staring at workmen pulling up the road, or at the soft whiteness of a child’s leg. Stout women, too, were a source of pleasure to him, whether by reason of the general cheeriness or good-humour one associates with stoutness, or from purely sexual pleasure at beholding such large-breasted females, Mr. Corkran did not exactly know, but he never passed a stout lady or a stout girl without feasting his eyes upon her.