by James Hanley
‘She’s making a rare mug of you, anyhow,’ remarked Desmond. ‘Naturally, if she didn’t get the money from me, she got it elsewhere. But that’s not my business, Joe Kilkey, that’s yours. You take my advice, and make her tell the truth. She’s as hard-faced as the devil. In that drawer in my office there lies a tin box, and it’s got money in it. A lot of money. Our members’ contributions—and I half believe she expected me to give it to her, the whole bloody lot. And I believe, too, that if she had had half a chance she would have pinched it, Kilkey.’
Joseph Kilkey grew quite pale. ‘That’ll do, Fury,’ he said coldly. ‘That’ll do. It’s going a bit too far. Maureen, after all, means something to me, and I don’t believe she would ever do such a thing.’
‘Don’t you? Women will do anything to get their way, Kilkey, and if you didn’t know that much, you know it now. Going far? Christ! I haven’t gone as far as Maureen might, if you don’t buckle up and control her.’ Then, lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said, ‘You’re a bit afraid of her, Kilkey, I can tell that. I could tell it as soon as you came here—as soon as you spoke. That’s why we’re in the same boat, Joe Kilkey. You see, I love my own wife so much that I’m afraid of her as well. They got us beat, Kilkey. But there’s always one way out. Always one way for a man to overcome them,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Well, I must be making a move.’ He took a notebook and pencil from his pocket, saying, ‘By the way, there’s one little favour I’d like you to do for me, Joe Kilkey. Will you give a note to Peter?’
Joseph Kilkey sat up in his chair. Give a note to Peter! Why should he give a note to Peter? He didn’t want to have anything to do with that fellow.
Desmond Fury paused, pencil in his hand. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘I do mind,’ said Mr. Kilkey. ‘Can’t you give it to him yourself?’
‘If I saw him I wouldn’t bother to ask you at all,’ said Desmond.
‘Then see him,’ said Mr. Kilkey.
‘No! I don’t want to see him,’ replied Mr. Fury. ‘Not yet. However, if you don’t want to—you don’t want to, and that’s that. Lord, man, you won’t catch the pox from it or anything like that.’
Mr. Kilkey began swinging his hat. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Give me the note,’ and he put on his hat and glanced towards the door, whilst the other man wrote in thick pencil upon the sheet of paper, ‘Keep away from Prees Street.’ He folded it up and said to Joseph Kilkey, ‘Thank you! You’ll already understand why I don’t want to go trapesing round Hatfields looking for my brother.’ He too got up.
‘I understand all right,’ said Mr. Kilkey. ‘Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Fury, but at the same time——’
‘At the same time what?’ broke in the other, as he pushed the table clear in order to get out. He met Mr. Kilkey’s smile with a scowl.
‘I shan’t see you again,’ Mr. Kilkey said. ‘But I never was a very sociable person, Fury. I take my thick head and ugly face as a penance.’
They went out on to the road.
So Maureen had told him a lie. She hadn’t had any money from her brother! Mr. Kilkey felt ashamed—ashamed of the very feeling that this discovery had engendered in him. ‘This man is a brute, he’s callous—selfish, aye, and he’s ignorant too—but God, he’s straight as a die,’ thought Joseph Kilkey. He had never liked this man much, he had always thought him a boor, and frightfully cruel to his mother, but somehow this conception was changing in spite of himself. He saw now that Desmond Fury’s life was wedded to one single idea. It wasn’t a very noble one by any means, but he was so frank about everything, that was it. The absolute frankness. And there was warmth in his handshake as they stood on the parapet and said ‘So-long’ to each other. ‘I don’t blame you for anything you ever did, Fury,’ remarked Mr. Kilkey. ‘Maybe you’re right after all, and I’m a bigger mug than I thought I was. It’s a swine, Fury, for I was so happy. When I first got married——’
‘When you got married, Kilkey, you should have laid down the law, but more important still, you should have gone to live somewhere else. One can live too near one’s mother-in-law. And you can still be happy, Kilkey, if you do what I say. Give her a few belts now and again and knock sense into her.’
‘That’s what I just can’t do,’ said Mr. Kilkey. ‘I tried once and it nearly broke me up. I never forgot it. I couldn’t hurt a flea. Honest, I couldn’t.’
‘You’re quite hopeless, Kilkey. That’s why I know you’ll never be in the Federation. You can’t fight for any rights. You never will, Joseph Kilkey, you were made to be trodden on. Never mind, there’s a good time coming for us workers. I just festered in Hatfields, Kilkey, festered in it. Nobody has any go in them. People live there year after year, having kids, and the kids live there, and they go on and on, and nothing ever happens. Something gets sucked right out of you. Christ! many a time I have a good laugh when I think of the things I used to do—the things I thought about and learnt. Ah! But I chucked it all to hell. Let them all smother in Hatfields. That’s what I say, Joe Kilkey. We don’t agree. Not on any single point—for if I said the world was lousy and the social system an insult you wouldn’t agree. What is it, Joe, just ignorance or bloody pigheaded indifference?’
People passed by them, and one or two, more curious than the rest, looked their way, paused for a second, and then went on. Joseph Kilkey and Desmond Fury stood arguing at the edge of the side-walk, but this world went on moving and living. The world forgot them. Joseph Kilkey now seemed rather disinclined to go at all. He let Desmond Fury talk on, not that it was all so very interesting, or that he, Joseph Kilkey was registering it in some corner of his mind for future contemplation, but merely because he felt he needed this man—he needed to be near him—to have his human companionship. But Desmond came to a halt. Another look at his watch—a hasty glance up and down the street, and then, as though celebrating the occasion, yet another warm handshake for the little man, and then he said, ‘Well, Kilkey, I must be away. I am a very busy man these days. Best of luck.’ And he swung away, leaving Mr. Kilkey still standing on the side-walk, hands in his pockets, and mind completely indifferent to the passing scene. He was thinking of all that man had said—he was saying to himself, ‘Yes, I could go home now, and get her by the throat and shake the life out of her.’ But shaking the life out of Maureen wasn’t, in his opinion, any help at all. No! He, Mr. Kilkey had his own ideas, and he stood for simple decency, he would appeal to her. What more could he do? A wrong word, a wrong gesture, and Maureen would clear, he knew it. He knew it too well.
‘But I’ll win. I’ll win. And without hurting a hair of her head.’
He walked off down the street and was soon lost amongst the crowds, whose one occupation this morning seemed to be walking up and down the main streets of Gelton, occasionally stopping to look into the magnificently dressed shop windows, and then resuming their promenading, for promenading it seemed to be.
‘What a lot of people have nothing to do,’ he said to himself as he turned round the corner and so slipped clear of the main stream of traffic. A morning walk in the city of Gelton was quite a novelty to Mr. Kilkey. The shops, the faces, the traffic, the large buildings, the various street cries, and above this a sort of hum—as though some hidden orchestra were voicing the spirit and essence of the city upon the smoke and breath-laden air—pleased him. Mr. Kilkey quite lost himself, he became a part of the city, breathing its air, feeling its warmth, admiring the very pavements made white by the sun. He walked down to the river-front, and seating himself on a bench, decided to buy a morning paper and catch the first tram home. Suddenly he remembered the note Desmond Fury had written. He had crushed it into his pocket and forgotten all about it. He now took it out. It was crumpled and had a grease-mark on it from the bit of candle that for some reason or other had found its way into the pocket of his best suit. He looked a long time at the note, but he did not read it.
‘He says I’m a mug,’ thought Mr. Kilkey. ‘And by God I believe I
am to even think of doing a bit of dirty work for him.’
He got up and walked across to the railings, saying, ‘I’m a mug, am I?’ and commenced to tear the note into shreds. He flung them into the dock and watched them float slowly away on the outgoing tide. Then he went to the kiosk and bought a copy of the Gelton Times. A few minutes later a north-bound car came along and Mr. Kilkey immediately boarded it for home.
‘I’m glad I went,’ he said to himself, as with a screeching sound the tram started on its journey.
Everything was going swimmingly. In fact, there hardly seemed to be anything wrong at all, unless, of course, it was Fanny’s sudden surrender. That was unusual. Such were Brigid Mangan’s thoughts as she lay on the bed in her sister’s room. To-morrow she’d be gone, and they could remain here. She would remain in Ireland. And that was the end of the matter.
‘The way people talk!’ she said to herself, ‘and I’m extremely surprised at Miss Pettigrew. They have a home, they have food, and money coming in. Good Lord! What more can Fanny want? I wonder? Ah! She’s as deep as the devil.’ The words ‘No Enquiries here’ might well have been blazoned over the door of number three Hatfields. How did she live? What did she do from day to day? What were her thoughts? Had she any hopes—was she still as overpowering as ever?’ No! I certainly don’t think so,’ Miss Mangan told herself. ‘She’s lost that, and a good job too.’ What she thought of the family she had raised, and of the man responsible, was something Miss Mangan had no urgent desire to know. The hours would fly and soon she’d be out of it altogether. Father and she. But at the bottom of her mind there lay hidden a fugitive thought that now and again stole to the surface and worried her very much, but her own reasoning always sent this fugitive and furtive thought scurrying back to its hiding-place.
‘But I just can’t help thinking of that poor girl,’ she kept telling herself again and again. ‘I just can’t! I don’t know what it is—maybe I do really hold her in my affections—I don’t know what it is—but when I think of her tied to that ugly old devil! What a madwoman that woman is! Driving her children away all the time. She simply won’t hear their point of view. It’s narrow and selfish. And by God, what a fool—what an ass—and what a selfish young prig she’s made of that boy! Priesthood! God forbid! She’s really beyond me. There’s that lad, if I really believe what passes into my ears—there he is gadding about with a woman old enough to be his mother! There must be something very queer about these Gelton people—awfully queer. They can’t look you straight in the face. They look as though somebody was running after them all the time—and dirty! Heavens! But there you are! What’s bred in the bone, as they say. Yet Fanny—yet Fanny—poor creature—she’s been sucked in with the rest of them. Well, you can’t tell her anything. She doesn’t want to know anything. She knows everything. I wonder?’
Fanny Fury passed out of Miss Mangan’s mind, and Mr. Mangan took her place.
‘It’s funny that though Dad had a little black box with him when he went away he hasn’t got it now. I wish!—I wish I knew what’s been going on here. I’d like to ask that fellow Peter, but I’m afraid. He’s just as thick with his mother as ever he was. Oh you fool, Fanny, you great generous fool!’ cried Brigid Mangan in her mind as she got up and straightened the bed-clothes. Then she went to the mirror and tidied her hair.
Mrs. Fury was calling, ‘Brigid! Brigid!’
‘Coming! Coming!’ called out Brigid, giving her head a final pat, ‘coming.—If that man were here this evening I know he’d place a big chalk mark on the ceiling,’ she thought as she went off downstairs where her sister was already waiting.
‘I’m ready now,’ she said. ‘Are you, Fanny? I hate being late at the play.’
‘I’ve been waiting some five minutes,’ remarked Fanny, and she pulled out the hat-pin from her black straw and jabbed it in again, saying, ‘Let’s go.’
‘Everything serene?—as that man of yours used to say,’ asked Miss Mangan.
‘Yes. Do come on!’ urged Mrs. Fury, whose patience had come to an end, but Brigid still stood, looking very concerned.
‘What’s the matter, Brigid? Aren’t you going out after all this getting ready? Good heavens! You’re just like Denny.’
‘Are you sure Father is all right?’ asked Brigid Mangan. ‘You amaze me. The risks you take. Supposing anything happened to him?’
‘Whatever happened would probably concern you far more than myself. Come along,’ said Mrs. Fury, and she half pushed Brigid out on to the step. ‘Dad is quite safe, I suppose. I’ve had to manage this for years, Brigid. Besides, if anything did happen—though God forbid—well, Mrs. Postlethwaite always knows when I’m out. She has her own key, which fits my house, and anyway, I always leave word with her where I’m going. But Dad’s gone past that stage now. One doesn’t have to worry so much. He can’t set fire to himself, and he can’t fall out of the bed, so there now.’ And the door of number three Hatfields banged to, and the two sisters went off down the street.
‘There’s them two queer sisters ‘had only to be spoken once, by a slatternly-looking old woman coming up the street with her daughter, to set Brigid Mangan’s ears burning.
‘Heavens! Fanny, every time I walk down this blessed street I wish for the very ground to swallow me up. How you can stand that sort of nosying, day after day, is beyond me. Oh, look! There’s the car.’
Miss Mangan started to run. It was here that she made her fatal mistake, and one that almost wrecked her whole evening, for she had not reckoned with that curious and ever-watchful element in the neighbourhood of Hatfields, which starts to life at the sight of a well-dressed though very buxom lady running breathlessly down the street, nor had she reckoned with that curious quality which a thirty years’ residence had implanted in Mrs. Fury. When Miss Mangan began to run, it was her sister who cried out within herself for the ground to open and swallow her, for she and not Brigid had tasted fully of the fruits of that malignant, if not bestial curiosity, that strange, wilful, bat-like groping into all the sacred recesses of life, that seemed the horror not only of Hatfields but all Gelton. Mrs. Fury said in her mind, ‘The whole street is staring at me,’ and wanted to sink into the earth.
‘Brigid!’ she called.
But Brigid had run on. This opening of doors, this staring of passers-by, the rude remarks, the moving of curtains, the laughs of children—these things had so affected Miss Mangan as to make her dash madly down the street, bag flying in the air, her short fat legs well exposed to view, her bosom rising and falling tempestuously, though they had made Mrs. Fury stop dead as though she were paralysed.
The tram had long since gone, and Brigid Mangan now stood panting like a racehorse, holding her sides, leaning against a lamp-post, her mouth half open, breath coming in terrific gasps, her face turning a beetroot red. Somehow Mrs. Fury managed to reach her.
‘Brigid! Fancy running like that! If you were a young girl one would not mind so much—but at your age, in your present state—really it’s silly. I have enough people staring at me. My God! I could have fallen where I was standing. Oh, Brigid, if you lived here for just a little while, you’d learn more than if you’d lived five hundred years in Ireland. The people are terrible!’
‘Don’t I know?’ cried Aunt Brigid. ‘Isn’t that what made me run? Fanny, I could never come here again. Never! Never! I loathe being stared at. And you can hear them whispering on the steps; is that all they have to do? Just stare like a lot of cows?’
‘That’s all! Now here’s a tram. And mind how you get on. The steps are high.’
Mrs. Fury was full of apologies. As soon as they had taken their seats, she said:
‘I don’t know really what made me not go out the back way. All the years I’ve lived in that house I’ve always used the back entrance. And so have the children. Denny never would. He said, “Blast the bloody people!” All right for him, who only saw the street twice in a whole year, when he was home from sea. People are awful, Brigid. Not a man or w
oman knocks at my door, but another passes—and not only mine, it’s the same in every house. I’ve been surprised at the things I’ve been told. They might as well not have walls at all, I do believe they hear all you say. Back or front, there’s always somebody there! And you dressed in brown from head to foot——’ She began laughing—‘You were asking for it! But it’s simply amazing, Brigid. If you should as much as hint that you prefer to mind your own business, they become quite offended as though you’d insulted them. Oh, sometimes I wish I could get a house out of it. Anywhere else. I’m always making up my mind to do it, then something comes along and there you are! The curious thing is that now I have a chance to go somewhere else, and d’you know, I haven’t a mind at all. I’m just lazy. That’s what’s wrong with me,’ and she began laughing again. ‘I’m getting lazy—I’m getting that way I don’t want to move—do anything.’
‘Yes. Yes, Fanny! I wish, too, you could get a change. It’s shameful! You must pull yourself together, woman—you’re all to pieces and it’s not good for you, Fanny. You’re no chicken now, you know. Are you, Fanny?’ and her smiling red face seemed almost to touch that of her sister. ‘Is it far to the place?’
‘Not far! We’re there now. Let’s go down on to the platform. The tram might not stop, and I’ll have to ring the bell. They’d kill you on these cars without thinking twice about it. There’s all the difference, Brigid—right before your eyes, and under your nose—there’s all the difference between living in Gelton and living in Cork. In Cork you can live peaceful and people are decent. In Gelton one never asks for it, one never expects it. They’ve known nothing about ordinary decent things.’
Miss Mangan began making her way along the top deck. ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s just it,’ she said, but her thoughts were miles away. They got off, and began climbing the hill. People were already queueing-up at the Lyric. Miss Mangan opened her bag and took out two tickets.