Kif

by Josephine Tey

  'Perhaps you would rather that I didn't come again?'

  'No, I'd like you to come, only it's pretty rotten for you.'

  'No, it isn't. It's very nice to get to know you all over again. I'd forgotten there was so much to know. And you see, I'm going to know you for many years yet.'

  She left him her violets and a vague new sense of self-respect. 'Keeping his pecker up' didn't apply merely to trust in a hope, but in being able to take the obliteration of hope like a man. Ann had not used the phrase to him, but something in her personality had given a new meaning to it.

  She carne twice more in the time that lay between the sentence and the day fixed for Kif's death, and each time put, for a little, some meaning into existence for him. Two days after her third visit the Home Secretary saw (officially) no reason to interfere with the course of justice; and it was Danny who said in a blaze of anger to Kif's friends, hanging back, 'Are you going to leave Kif to a—parson when he hears that?' And it was Danny who went to him first.

  'It's better that way,' was all Kif said. 'I know what you tried to do, Dago. Bluffing Wilkins. It was dam' good of you…You'll look after Baba, won't you?'

  'I will,' said Danny.

  'I haven't been any little plaster saint, but there's a whole heap worse about. You'll look after her, won't you?'

  'Do you want to see her?'

  'No'.

  'Anyone you'd like to see?'

  'Yes, Angel…And Mrs Heaton, if she comes of her own accord. Not unless. Don't ask her. Promise!'

  'I promise,' said Danny, giving him his hand in farewell. 'I wish to God it could have been me, Kif!'

  On the last evening Ann came.

  'Isn't that girl going to see him now?' she had asked her husband, and he had said no, that she was a rotter and a funk, and there wasn't enough publicity in it for her.

  'And she can leave him alone like that! Alone! Good God!' she had cried.

  'So it's a washout, Kif,' she said, her lips trembling.

  'Yes, don't mind, Ann. It was that from the beginning. The other way would have been worse. It's only the waiting that's bad now.'

  Her heart was crying: 'But this is the end of everything for him! Going out, like a flame. To-morrow there would be no Kif, nor ever any more. Finished. This boy, alive and lovable. The end of him. Nothing any more. God, how awful!

  And his was saying: 'I've got to do it decently. It's the only thing that's left. I've got to do it decently.'

  'I want to thank you for being so good. I wish I could have seen your kiddy. Is he like you?'

  'Well, Murray says he is, but I think he's like Murray. Very natural. Parents are like that.' She kept it at that level for a few minutes. Then she said:

  'I'm going, Kif,' and took both his hands.

  'Ann,' he said, gently, contemplating her. 'Do you remember that first night I came to see you, and you came down in the black-and-gold thing?'

  'Rather!'

  'I was awfully scared to come. Scared stiff. Did you know?'

  'No, I didn't guess.'

  'It was you who cured me of being scared.'

  'Bend down,' she said.

  He bent his tall body. She put her ungloved hand on his hair and kissed his cheek.

  'You've been a brick, Kif,' she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The woman unbolted her cottage door and set it wide to the clear morning. Pearly and high-heavened it stretched to the far round-backed hills, daffodil gold in the first sunlight. The dew lay grey on a shadowless world, and no bird sang. The sound of the drawn bars dropped into the stillness and was lost in the wide waiting loveliness.

  The woman's eyes were wet as she turned from the door. Her man came down the wooden stair, stocking-soled because of the sleeping children. He sat by the hearth to put his boots on, and she bent to the kindling fire.

  'I used to save him candle-ends,' she said. 'He was always great for the reading. And give him tea sometimes in the mornings. Poor Kif! Poor boy!'

  Her tears hissed in the crackling wood.

  THE END

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  1/28/2010