by James Hanley
‘Peter! Dear Peter! Forgive me! Please! Don’t be angry. Try—try to understand.’
‘Don’t touch me.’ He lifted his hands away from his face and looked at her, and she felt his cheeks wet and smeared with tears and the warm sweat of his own hands. She sensed the hurt in him, she could sense it in that sudden withdrawal. He drew his body farther away, until at last he was alone on the other end of the seat.
‘Don’t come near me! Don’t! I can’t trust myself. Oh, Sheila!’
In the darkness his face, so white, looked like a splash of light. His lips trembled, the salt tears smarted his eyes.
‘It’s you who are the coward,’ he flung the words at her like a whip, ‘you! You are afraid of him: even as you are afraid of yourself. I do love you, Sheila, honestly, with all my heart. I am not a child. Do you understand? I am not some silly boy,’ and he stamped his anger into the cold, wet sand. ‘Why shouldn’t we run away if you say you love me? Why shouldn’t we? Mother! Does she care for my feelings, when I was shut away seven years, and she knew—she knew that I was ashamed, disappointed, angry with myself, because I couldn’t be what she wanted. She knew I was waiting all that time for her to say “Come out of it! Come out of it!” But she didn’t, and now I’m out and I’m free, and there’s you—and there’s all that dirt behind. Don’t you see, Sheila? Aren’t we in the same boat? Aren’t we both trying to run away from what we hate?’
‘It is easy for you, but not for me. You’re different. I’m a woman, and a woman can only see all around her traps, traps. Don’t you see? She is trapped by feelings, by considerations. It is willed that her own hand shall shut the door against her own deepest nature, that she shall betray herself. I am bound. You do not understand the significance of that. How can you? For there is something in a woman—so deep, so hidden away, so swathed and smothered, that no man can see it. But when a woman loves out of her own true, passionate self, then and then only does she reveal it. You don’t understand now, but you will. You are like a mirror to me, for until you came I had never realized my own cold, barren—oh, my own emptiness. But you are full, yet from the fullness you learn nothing. That is right and just. A time will come. You can’t force that which will not be forced. So, please, my darling boy, understand me. I am not thinking of myself. I am not pitying myself. You see, I am only human like yourself. Come!’
She drew nearer to him, but he would have moved even further but that he was now crouched over the very end of the seat.
‘Leave me alone,’ he shouted. ‘Leave me alone.’
He couldn’t believe it. He was walled in by doubt, by rage. It seemed impossible. It seemed mad, crazy, cruel. That she should have loved him and then let those lies fall from her lips. Lies. All lies. She was taking advantage of him. She was laughing behind his back, pulling faces over his shoulder. She was tormenting him and gloating over it. The lies poisoned her very breath. He hated to look at her—and despised himself for the very rage he could not will himself to control. And he thought of all he had said to her, of how trusting, generous, he had been. He had ransacked every feeling, he had surrendered everything to her because he loved her. Now she lectured him, now she pitied her own past, now she laughed at his years, taunted him with her own. He sank even lower upon the bench, as though his own musing dragged him down, down. Suddenly he looked up. Sheila was standing before him. Her face showed neither anger nor hurt. It revealed nothing. It was wooden, expressionless, and once more those eyes had that peculiar hard and lightless look. She bent down and pressed her face upon his hair. He did not speak. He sat quite motionless, his eyes resting upon her bare throat, and now, like a sudden unconscious and brutal curiosity, following that white line until it stopped where the lapels of the blue coat came together, stopped and sensed and felt what lay hidden behind it. That lovely white skin he had touched, those lovely breasts upon which he had laid his head.
She heard the thumping of his heart, and she allowed him to draw her down upon the bench. She lay there, white-faced, tense, eyes wide open, staring into the clear sky. She heard the rumbling of those waters in her ears. She saw his face lower itself to meet her own, and putting her arms behind his neck she drew him down upon her.
They spoke now by silence, the one looking at the other, and understanding, and divining the meaning behind this voiceless surrender. It grew darker still, the wind came up suddenly, salt-laden, passing over their heads. They were one with this indisputable silence and serenity. They were enveloped in the grandeur and serenity of the scene.
‘Dear Peter.’
‘Don’t you see how I love you, Sheila?’
‘Ssh!’ she whispered, and stopped his mouth with her gloved hand. ‘Ssh!’
‘I must go now,’ he said. He turned the sand out of the turn-up of his trousers and got up from the bench.
‘Yes. It’s late! Come, let’s go!’ She took his arm and they hurried along the beach. Their steps were soundless, the sand seemed plastic, even flesh-like to the tread. A mist had begun to rise upon the river. The dark surface of the water became illuminated, and looking south, they saw many lights which seemed to throb upon the water.
They were back in the cobbled street. It was half-past ten. Everything was shrouded in silence, that silence that falls upon a city with such dramatic suddenness, as though with the coming of darkness all the desperate life that peopled it now scurried away into hiding—into holes and corners, behind walls and fences. Gelton was masked. They came out of the cobbled street just as a car was coming down the road. It was a late car journeying citywards, and it was almost empty. They boarded it, climbed the stairs, and sat huddled together in the back seat, she shivering with the cold, he still warm and throbbing from that scene upon the deserted bench. Hardly had they made themselves comfortable than the tram stopped and the conductor called up, ‘Next stop Stage.’
They went downstairs again. The tram went on, leaving them isolated on the cold, uninviting concrete of the pavement.
She began to laugh. ‘How silly we’ve been, Peter darling. Kiss me,’ and she pouted her lips and smiled a most puckish smile. ‘You see how far we’ve travelled. We’ve explored oceans and seas and countries and continents, and we’ve forgotten about things at home. Did you get that job you were telling me about?’ She put her mouth to his ear. ‘Tell me, little boy, aren’t you glad you gave up that ship? Didn’t you jump when your mother said stay? Didn’t you realize that her weakness was a very advantageous one?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, looking astounded. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, Peter! Peter! You say you love me and you don’t see what I mean. Oh!’ and she looked disappointed at once. ‘Oh, Peter. You are such a silly, you know. I know you better than you know yourself. I can see right through you.’
Something made him exclaim desperately, ‘But Mother was very lonely. I knew as soon as I heard Grandfather was going. You see, it’s unusual for Mother to do a thing like that. It completely bewildered me at first,’ he concluded, never shifting his eyes from her face.
‘What, asking you to stay and keep her company?’
‘No!’ he said impatiently. ‘Her letting Grandfather go home to Ireland.’
‘Nothing unusual in that, my dear Peter! He has a right to go home if he wants to.’
‘It’s a strange thing for Mother to do, that’s all I know. But never mind that. Are you angry with me?’
‘I was so angry about everything. I’m sorry. I never meant it. I couldn’t hurt you,’ she said, but he made no response. He gave no sign. ‘Aren’t you going to come and see me again?’
‘No!’ he said angrily. ‘I can’t now! I don’t want to see you again. It’s all a farce. You only fool me. You even fooled me on that bench, you——’
‘Oh, Peter darling, how can you be so cruel as to say that? Fooled you. Why, I was nothing but myself. I was only being what I am. A woman. You poor boy. You are so highly strung, and nervous too. But you will come to see me.’
H
e blazed with anger, struck his fist into his chest and said, ‘No! No!’ Then he ran.
She called to him, ‘Peter! Peter!’ She began running herself.
But Peter Fury had gone. It was as though his own defeated self had suddenly risen and mocked him, as if his own impotent anger had at last found voice, and had violently shaken him and sent him on his way. He ran down Devon Road, crossed the Avenue, and continued running until he reached the Forester Hall, where he stopped to rest. Leaning against the wall he felt he wanted to cry again, to shout his rage upon that dark and deserted street. Were they all like that?
‘I don’t believe her! I don’t believe her! Oh, Sheila! You make me simply hate you, and I do hate you—and I hate myself.’ Yes. She had been everything. All his hours and days were coloured by thoughts of her, every fibre of his body retained the ecstasies he had experienced, every thought was of her. How he had longed each day, longed for the evening and the darkness that dragged him night after night relentlessly, tirelessly to that flashing light on the horizon. Always he had seen her face, her lovely eyes, her laughing mouth, and he forgot his misery, he forgot his home, forgot the secrecy, the stares, the lies, the struggle, the everyday monotony. If he only knew! If!
‘But I don’t! I can’t believe her now. Once she said she hated Desmond, and now she says it’s different. Desmond! Lucky pig! It would be him—one like him—who would have Sheila! I hate him too. I loathe them both. They all seem the same. Full of their own importance. They’re grown up. But aren’t I? Damn and blast! It began with Mother! Yes, it began with her. How sly these women are! They can poison you with their affection if they like.’
He began to laugh! For he saw now a clear picture of Mrs. Ragner, with her greasy skin, her claw-like fingers, her heavy rings, her hair that was too black and her eyes that were too wide open. He saw her reclining upon a couch—he heard her talking again.
‘She’s mad,’ he thought. ‘Mad. And I took some of her money. She’s mad! She thinks she’s hated by everybody—that her money has soured her. Yes. I think I even hurt her when I laughed. But I am afraid of that man, Corkran! Yes, I am afraid of him. I believe he’s watching. Yes. I believe it’s him who presses the button—who makes the borrowers dance—aye, he’d make Mother dance. He’s got her in a trap just like he says he’s got Mrs. Ragner. But why in the name of God is Mother so ashamed to admit that she is in a net? Who can help her out of it if she won’t let herself be helped?
‘It’s funny now when I come to think of it. My schooldays in Gelton—running messages for Mr. Dingle in the evenings, going home to bread-and-tea suppers.
‘I was happy then. Nothing seemed miserable until I started to grow up. Then everything altered. Then what I never seemed to notice suddenly revealed itself to me. It was misery. The misery of struggling day after day, the rows and rows and rows that must have echoed in every room in the house. Not enough money. Money! Money! That was more than seven years ago. Maureen says it’s always been like that. So now I know why she hates me. Because I was educated on their money. They hate me because I’m intelligent, because I learned what they never learned, as if it’s any bloody good after all. And Desmond’s sly with Mother. Making me feel it more than ever. And Dad’s devil-may-care. It’s all wrong. It’s all wrong. Sheila says she’s found a meaning in living. So have I. I used to think I hated Hatfields like poison, Hatfields and all its filthy streets. Now I see I was wrong. It’s only the houses, the grey bricks and mortar, the unwashed windows, the smelly bone yard, the dirty children, the dirtier yards, and everything rotting in this beastly place. How I used to love going fishing with Desmond! Away from all that. Yes. We were all the same. Maureen as well! Smiling outside and frowning inside. And how it used to enrage Mother! Poor Mother! That’s what makes her so mad, this being stuck here for ever, for ever, for ever and ever. Never a holiday, never a shilling in her pocket.
‘Why shouldn’t I feel ashamed, not only of disappointing her, but of being inconsiderate and mean, yes, even running off to Sheila, whom I love so much, who makes all the drabness vanish, who makes everything beautiful, because she is beautiful herself?’
He walked slowly along, past the Town Hall, and stopped for a moment to look at the deserted square, as he said to himself, ‘Yes, and this time last year, this time last year I met that lunatic with the deer-stalker, who sat behind me on that stone lion, when the horses charged. And how they cracked those heads, knocked those poor women down, even knocked a piece out of Mr. Postlethwaite’s skull, who never hurt a fly in all his life. There’s George. How happy George is! Never need bother about girls. And his old mare—Nabob. Nabob. Morning, noon, and night, Nabob. Fancy calling a mare Nabob.’ And he smiled to himself.
‘Ah! They’re happier than we are—though they’re only working people just like us. But perhaps that’s because they’re not Catholics. Ugh! I hate them! And the way that fellow Father Moynihan calmly takes Mother’s shilling on a Sunday. For the Church. H’m! Many a packet of cigarettes I’ve seen him buy with the same shilling that Mother’s struggled to scrape together.
‘H’m! A lot of bloody good her relations are. All stony-broke—all full of themselves, all good livers, and all hoping for a happy death. I remember the times when I served behind Father Moynihan on the altar. I used to think how terrible it was—and, hell! it was fierce. But all that makes me laugh now.’
He thrust his hands in his pocket, and assuming a somewhat jaunty gait, whistled his way along until he reached the beginning of Mile Hill. Suddenly he stopped, and something seemed to turn all cold in him.
‘Heavens! I’ve forgotten! I’ve never given a thought. Supposing Mother has gone to that house?’ He increased his pace. He forgot everything now. Only one thought remained engraved upon his mind. He was full of fear. Supposing something had happened. Supposing that man had split. ‘He would split, that cruel, sinister, sly-looking devil would. He’d even murder. And he knows! He spied on me. He watched us. He knows—he saw her kiss me—saw her give me money. Oh, God! Why did I take it? What made me so foolish? Why didn’t I realize when she kissed me—why didn’t I see her game? And I could almost feel his dirty grin—almost feel it touching my face!’
He began to run. A clock struck eleven. ‘What’s the use?’ he said, and fell into a walking pace once again. Here was the King’s Road. All silent here too. Dead-like, as though nobody had ever lived—ever breathed in the place. Even Mr. Quickle’s shop was black and drab, and those iron railings with the lamplight falling upon them—how like the gateway they were—the entrance to some gloomy prison. The mist had crept in over the river. It came up the little streets like waves. Soon it was a thick fog. But here was the end of the King’s Road. Hatfields at last.
Peter Fury stopped. Never before had he contemplated Hatfields on such a night as this, and at such a time. Behind the sea of roofs, roofs that seemed but a grey blur behind the ever-thickening fog, he could see the glow from the furnace in the boiler-house of the bone factory. He could see the closely packed houses, whose front doors were open the livelong day, twenty-two doors on either side of the street that seemed to manifest that calm indifference to the other’s existence. The steps on which the inhabitants sat, the gutters in which the children played, the lamp-post—the lamp with its broken glass, and the liquid light throwing a sort of dull glare into the fog-laden atmosphere of the street. The hard cobbles upon which lay stretched the fantastic shadows created by the street lamps, but which were now blotted out by the spreading white blanket. The air was damp, and there was the unmistakable tang of the sea about this white cloud that had come in from far across the river. How lonely and deserted. How horribly and fantastically silent, as if all life lay helpless beneath the pall, as if it had struck power from the tongue, light from the lamp, struck meaning and purpose from these two rows of dingy houses that had held each other up for so long. And there at the end of the street was Mr. Quickle the jeweller’s.
‘Mr. Quickle,’ thought Peter. ‘He
seems to have lived at the corner of Hatfields for years and years and years.’
Yes. No doubt about it at all. There was one everlasting quality about Mr. Quickle. ‘Just imagine. He’d remember Mother when she was a girl. Before any of us were born. What a long, long, long time it seems we have been living in this same, stinking street. But Mother seems to have lived here years and years and years, and Grand-dad must have walked up and down here many a time.’ He leaned against the wooden shutters of Mr. Quickle’s.
How peaceful it was to-night, more than any other night he had known. How the fog had changed it all. It hardly seemed Hatfields at all. And those dirty chimneys looked just like a long row of very tall black hats.
‘Just think of it! Father about twenty-three and Mother eighteen. Dear me! And now she’s fifty-nine and Dad’s sixty-two. And somehow there doesn’t seem to have been a single reason for living for sixty years. Neither is satisfied. They’re just as restless even as I am—although they’re old. But they can remember things. I can’t. They have the advantage there.’
In spite of the cold, damp atmosphere, he took out a handkerchief and, laying it on the stone step of Mr. Quickle’s private house, sat down and leaned his head against the door. Prees Street was unlike Hatfields, indeed Hatfields was like no other street in the whole of Gelton. And how splendid it was that when he first woke of a morning his thoughts turned towards the other street, where she lived, and every thought of her quickened the hours so that in the evening his feet trod this magic path to the beautiful thing that had come into his life. He could forget everything then.
He heard the measured tread of a policeman, and got up at once. Then he walked down to number three. The door was slightly ajar, the heavy door-mat pushed against it to prevent it blowing open. The house was in darkness. He let himself in, closed the door without a sound, and went into the kitchen. For a moment he stood in the darkness, the glow from the ever-burning fire throwing a huge and fantastic shadow of himself upon the opposite wall.