The Secret Journey

by James Hanley

  Brigid smiled. ‘She took it on herself, didn’t she?’

  ‘More credit to her, then,’ replied the old woman sharply. ‘Be reasonable, Brigid. You haven’t seen your father yet—you can’t know just how low he is. And surely the awful journey must never have occurred to you. Dr. Dunfrey may have something to say about that.’ She drummed on the glass with her fingers.

  Brigid Mangan, in no way perturbed by this dampening, said, ‘I have thought over everything, my dear—everything. Do you suppose I should have come over here for nothing?’ and she drummed on the table with her fingers.

  ‘That depends, of course,’ said the old woman, ‘that depends.’

  ‘All being well, Father will return with me on Sunday’s boat.’

  ‘He will!’

  ‘Certainly. I have made up my mind about that. Fanny, far from refusing, will be the first to see the sense of it.’ She looked across at Miss Pettigrew, who had suddenly slumped in her seat. ‘Biddy, my dear,’ she said, and went to her. Miss Pettigrew wasn’t feeling very well. ‘You shouldn’t have come, dear,’ Brigid said.

  It was half-twelve when the two women left ‘The Mermaid.’ Brigid Mangan’s strong arm took the weight of the old woman. It seemed that, far from feeling faintish, Miss Pettigrew was feeling only a little too well—indeed, the drink had gone to her head. Miss Mangan realized this with a blush of shame, and as she piloted the caped and bonneted old woman down what seemed the interminable length of the public bar-room, the blush upon her face seemed to cry out for attention, and everybody at the counter stopped drinking to turn round and look at the two women passing through. Somebody laughed, for Miss Pettigrew’s condition was such as to cause the greatest concern to her friend. As they reached the door the old woman’s body sagged, her feet gave way, and only Brigid Mangan’s strong arm prevented her from pitching to the floor.

  ‘A right pair,’ commented an onlooker.

  ‘Disgraceful, I call it,’ observed the proprietress, who had just come behind the counter. An obliging man called a cab, handed the two women into it, and the cab set off for the little general shop in St. Sebastian’s Place.

  Brigid Mangan was speechless. There could be no doubt at all. She had arrived in Gelton all right, and her adventures had really begun.

  Miss Pettigrew after an ominous silence stammered, ‘Brigid! I’m sorry, I ought not to have taken that gin. But I feel a little better now. It’s the air. I felt so queer before. But it was foolish of me to come out without a bite in my stomach.’

  ‘Oh dear, dear! I didn’t know that, I’m so sorry, I do wish you hadn’t come.’

  ‘But I wanted to, Brigid,’ replied the old woman. ‘There! I feel all right now,’ and she sat up straight in her seat, though Brigid Mangan still held her arm round her. She felt ashamed, and this added to a certain disappointment that the old woman’s remarks had left her in anything but a cheery frame of mind. She now wished she hadn’t written to the old woman. She wished Biddy hadn’t come to meet her. And she wondered with a sudden new-born curiosity what had caused this change of mind on the part of her oldest friend. For it now seemed that Biddy Pettigrew was determined to damp all optimism, and to side with Mrs. Fury.

  Considering the history and nature of their long friendship, this seemed very unusual. Twice she said to herself, ‘I wonder? I wonder?’ and then laughed. It was absurd to think of such a thing, to suppose for a moment that Miss Pettigrew had divined her real purpose, her real reason for coming to Gelton.

  Miss Pettigrew, after much groping in the inside pocket of her cape, took out the small packet of jujubes which she always carried, and said to Brigid, ‘Have a jujube, Brigid, I’d completely forgotten I had them. I wish I’d known.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Brigid Mangan.

  When the cab reached Mile Hill, Biddy Pettigrew had quickly become her old self again, and this change might very well have been due to this discovery of the old confection in which she placed great faith and hope. When she felt out of sorts she sucked a jujube, when she was in a bad temper she resorted to the paper bag—in fact, for every occasion this old woman found her confection undeniably efficacious. And, moreover, only a woman like Miss Pettigrew could appreciate them.

  This confection became almost a drug from the time when she would secretly go into the shop, fill her bag, and then go upstairs to the quiet bedroom and suck them with a queer, rapturous joy. As the cab climbed the hill, the only sounds inside the cab were those of Miss Biddy Pettigrew sucking her way back to normality again, after that perilous adventure in ‘The Mermaid.’

  Miss Mangan, though this loud sucking got on her nerves, derived a certain satisfaction from it. She could keep her silence. And at the moment that was the only thing she wished. To sit quietly in the cab and think over matters. It had seemed to her that Miss Pettigrew’s back parlour was the ideal headquarters from which to work, but it did not seem so now. Something had upset the old woman.

  But what? That was what Brigid Mangan was thinking about as she leaned heavily against the side of the cab and looked out indifferently at the passing people—the rows and rows of dingy-looking houses—the decrepit-looking exteriors of shops of all shapes and sizes, their windows packed with an endless assortment of goods. ‘She’s moody,’ thought Miss Mangan, ‘and I don’t wonder. Silly old fool! Coming out at that hour in the morning without a bite to eat.’ Miss Pettigrew, like her companion, seemed to have decided that silence between them was obligatory until they arrived at the sweet-shop. When Miss Mangan, apparently bored by the endless monotony of dreary-looking shops, and what appeared to her to be a procession of even drearier-looking human beings, happened to look the old lady’s way, she was astonished to discover that Biddy Pettigrew had sunk lower and lower upon the seat. All that could be seen was the bonnet and its red roses, whose almost rhythmic nod synchronized with the nodding of her head, that seemed very near her knees, on which her two hands were pressed flat, the attitude of a person experiencing certain painful twinges in the stomach.

  ‘Ah!’ Miss Pettigrew exclaimed, and the thin, squeaky voice seemed to emerge from the very depths of the human heap—‘I know one who won’t mind at all what you do with the old man. And that’s Denny. That’s no God-fearing man, my good woman. He just doesn’t care a hang.’

  ‘He is just as contrary as she is,’ was Brigid Mangan’s reply, a muffled one, for her fingers partly covered her mouth. ‘I dare say if he were at home he would be the first to put his foot down,’ and Brigid Mangan even stamped her own foot as though to give emphasis to her opinion.

  The cab came to a stop. ‘Why, here we are,’ said Miss Pettigrew. She allowed herself to be partly dragged, partly lifted out of the cab, and turning to Miss Mangan, exclaimed excitedly, as though with the joy of having arrived, ‘Brigid, my dear, do you pay off the cabby and I’ll go up and see if that child has got your room ready.’

  But when she stepped inside, Brigid Mangan was behind her. The cabby followed, carrying the tin bandbox, the bright yellow colour of which seemed out of place in the drab shop at St. Sebastian Place.

  The first thing that caught Miss Mangan’s eye was the counter. Here indescribable confusion reigned. Upon a large open dish containing stewed-beef, two blue-bottles buzzed, some soap-powder had fallen into a box of aniseed balls, and some threads adhered to the large pat of butter that stood on the end of the counter.

  ‘Do you have no help in the shop?’ asked Brigid, whose feet were almost touching the old woman’s heels. The glass door was pushed open and they stepped into the kitchen.

  ‘Molly comes in to help me,’ replied the old woman, ‘but not in the shop. I look after that myself. Now let me show you your room, Brigid.’

  Miss Mangan sat down. ‘I must get my breath,’ she said.

  That the lady from Ireland would stay with her, Miss Pettigrew was certain, yet somehow Miss Mangan’s attitude wasn’t right, she didn’t seem settled. Perhaps she was going to stay with her sister after all.
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br />   ‘I think I ought to see Fanny first,’ announced Brigid. Then she went into the shop to settle with the cabby.

  When she came back, Miss Pettigrew exclaimed, ‘But I thought you were stopping here, Brigid. At least, I gathered as much from your letter.’

  ‘But perhaps I ought to see Fanny first, Biddy,’ said Brigid.

  ‘Very well, please yourself. But I must get you something. You’ve had a long journey, and I do think you ought to lie down. You can quite well see your sister after dinner. Here is Molly. Molly,’ she said, ‘put Miss Mangan’s box in the back room, and her coat and hat. Then I want you to make a nice strong cup of tea.’

  She turned to Miss Mangan and said, ‘Now you rest yourself.’

  She hobbled out of the kitchen and slowly climbed upstairs. She stood in Miss Mangan’s room staring down at the yellow bandbox. ‘Now I wonder if all that woman says is really true,’ she said to herself. And again as she hobbled her way out of the room, ‘I’m not quite certain about Brigid.’ She went downstairs. It was nearly two o’clock before they commenced dinner. Miss Mangan had a fried steak and onions and rich brown gravy. Miss Pettigrew contented herself with a small portion of a herring.

  ‘I would hardly have thought yesterday, when I was kept so busy in the shop, Brigid—I hardly imagined that to-day I should see you sitting here having dinner with me.’

  She looked anxiously round the room, and out through the glass door. It seemed Molly had gone back home, that now they were alone at last.

  ‘I do hope that bell won’t ring, Brigid,’ she concluded, a piece of fish half on its journey to her open mouth. And as she swallowed it, ‘I hate having to go out during meals. I thought once of shutting the shop from one till three o’clock. But then I decided not to. People have to have bread and such things. But for all that, I am kept busy, Brigid, and, my God! how the days fly. It seems only yesterday since you were here, and here you’ve been tight in that castle of yours for over a year. Ah, but things have changed, haven’t they? Look at Hatfields. That house of your sister’s is quite empty. Brigid Mangan, if you get your father out of that house you’ll be a very lucky woman, though if you do I wouldn’t be in your shoes for ten thousand pounds, not me.’ She handed a plate containing cake to her visitor. ‘Please, Brigid,’ she said.

  ‘What a thing to say!’ replied Miss Mangan, helping herself to a piece of cake. ‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.

  Miss Pettigrew smiled, ‘Oh nothing! nothing! Just an old body’s thought, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t you ever have any help in the shop? You amaze me how you manage, Biddy,’ said Miss Mangan. She had cleared the table for the old woman, and the two women were seated by the fire. ‘Molly is very good to come and help you as she does.’

  ‘But I pay her, of course,’ Miss Pettigrew replied. ‘Nobody helps another these days, Brigid my good woman, without receiving payment for it. Oh dear no! Those days are gone. People are not like they used to be. …’ The old woman, for the second time that day, took out her bag of jujubes and offered one to Miss Brigid Mangan; and it seemed that one could hardly refuse.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Brigid, and put a jujube in her mouth, gave a kind of hard squint at the old woman and remarked, ‘Biddy, you seem to like these little red gums.’ To which remark Miss Pettigrew replied by a nod of the head. And she sucked her sweet. She sucked it loudly, determinedly, in fact the old woman sucked with a sort of abandon. In this very act of sucking she seemed to draw her vitality from the confection. Sometimes her face became quite contorted when the jujube stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she made frantic efforts to release it with the tip of her tongue.

  ‘You are full of surprises, Brigid,’ Miss Pettigrew said during a pause in the sucking, ‘why this sudden urge to take the old man home?’

  The stout lady was already fidgeting in her chair. She had made up her mind to go round to Hatfields at once and get the business over and done with, and with Miss Pettigrew’s question her desire increased. It seemed that jujubes always threw the old woman into reminiscent mood. But at the moment Miss Mangan did not want to do any talking. That could wait well enough till the evening. Miss Pettigrew put on her glasses.

  ‘Brigid,’ she said, ‘you’re fidgeting about like an old cat. What’s the matter?’

  Miss Mangan got up. She was glad Miss Pettigrew had said that. It freed her.

  ‘I must go round at once and see my sister,’ she said.

  ‘Will you leave your things here, then?’ asked Miss Pettigrew.

  ‘Yes, until I’ve seen her, Biddy. I feel I want to get this matter settled one way or the other. I’ll go up and change,’ and without another word she left the kitchen and went upstairs.

  The old woman settled herself more comfortably in the chair. ‘She’s in no mood for talking here,’ she said to herself. ‘Ah, but I’d like to know why she’s in such a hurry. I would that. She’s as sly as an old fox, as Denny says, God forgive that man.’

  When, a quarter of an hour later, Brigid Mangan entered the kitchen, the old woman was fast asleep in her chair. She tiptoed into the shop, only to bump into the young woman named Molly, who was just coming in.

  ‘Well, well! So here you are again,’ she said, smiling up at the young woman. ‘Miss Pettigrew has fallen asleep. Ssh!’ and she moved quietly towards the door.

  ‘She always does at this time of the day,’ said Molly in a very loud voice, ‘and I always stay in the shop till about half-five o’clock.’

  ‘Fancy!’ said Brigid. ‘I suppose one of these days you’ll stand behind the counter feeling more at home,’ and she smiled her way out of the shop.

  ‘Old cat!’ remarked Molly, and quietly shut the door after Miss Mangan, already half-way down the street, and walking not in the direction of her sister’s house, but towards the house where her niece lived. Brigid Mangan had decided to see Dermod. Fanny could wait a little longer. No doubt she had had her letter. It would give it time to sink in. ‘No! I don’t know why I act like this. I simply can’t explain,’ she was saying to herself. ‘I just do these things and go on doing them. But she understands me thoroughly by now.’ Brigid Mangan wasn’t preparing herself for any surprises. She knew them all beforehand, thanks to her ‘old friend’ in St. Sebastian Place. She was just a little disappointed in Miss Pettigrew. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I can sort of feel it. We don’t seem one any more. We’re not together. She doesn’t see eye to eye with me at all.’

  But here was Price Street, and there number 35. No change at all. Just as she had seen it twelve months ago. Same old curtains, same old black knocker on the door, and yes, the same movements of curtains, for already Miss Mangan had seen the curtain at number 37 pulled back and a woman look out at her as she stood outside the Kilkeys’ door. Miss Mangan rarely stared a person out, but suddenly she found herself staring at this granite-like face in the window. ‘What awful people!’ she said under her breath. ‘It’s just terrible to think of that poor girl living here. Oh dear! the world is cruel.’ She made to knock at the door, when she discovered it was ajar. And not only was the door ajar, but the sound of raised voices came into the lobby. Brigid Mangan did not move. She was listening intently, and she could hear every word of the argument. The granite-faced woman had returned to the next-door window in order to get a better view of this phenomenon outside, who had so suddenly invaded the long grey street. The whole street might have come to stare, but it would have little affected the lady, for she was by now in such a state of excitement that the world had reduced itself to a plain door, most of whose paint was already off, showing the plain and dirty wood beneath; a door that was a little ajar, and through which the raised voices of a man and a woman could still be heard. To say that Brigid Mangan was frozen with horror was to put it mildly. She was shocked, deeply shocked. She stood rooted to the floor. ‘Well! I never!’ In Miss Mangan’s world the only raised voices she had ever heard had been the high alto of Father Twomey, singing the praises at St. Andre
w’s, and the pure treble of the choir-boys. But these were entirely different. She wanted to knock, yet each time she raised her hand she as quickly drew it back. Her ear and not her hand controlled her. She just had to listen. For here was Maureen loudly complaining at the top of her voice, and there was that man—yes—could she have ever thought otherwise of so ugly a person?—there was that ugly bald-headed devil of a man shouting her down—Maureen, her own niece.

  Out of the corner of her eye Brigid Mangan saw two things. She saw the granite-like face in the window broaden into a smile, and she saw a man, the thinnest human being she had ever seen, come and stare at the door of the next-door house. He had his hands in his pockets, and he lounged there looking at Miss Mangan. When curiosity made her look up at him she found him grinning. Her hand went to her hat at once. Then she knocked gently on the knocker. In such an embarrassing situation extreme delicacy was necessary. But Mr. and Mrs. Kilkey, whose ears were already filled by the sound of each other’s raised voices, did not hear it. It was with a kind of desperation that Brigid Mangan now knocked loudly on the door, at the same time pushing it open and stepping into the lobby—and thankfully too, for those hard-faced people were still looking at her—and standing there, called, ‘Maury! Maury!’ Then she went to the kitchen door and knocked.

  ‘Well, I’m telling you again,’ the man was saying. ‘You had no right to burn her note or anybody’s note, and I’ll find out where you got the money.’