by James Hanley
Desmond said nothing. He kept his silence. Marriage for him became freedom from the fetter. He called it a fetter. It goaded him to think that part of his hard-earned money should go to keep another in idleness. He was open and frank with his mother so far as Peter was concerned. His sister took his part. Her mother had no right to single out Peter like that. It was sheer folly. They all of them had to make their way without thinking of Peter. Mrs Fury saw with open eyes. The veil was torn away at last. The net she herself had flung out could hold them secure no longer. It wasn’t Peter so much. It was herself. Had they no love or respect? Didn’t they realize that it was her one great wish? Mr Fury could not be drawn in. If only he could – but he remained aloof. He was out of it all. One month in every twelve saw him home. He was a mere visitor to the house. He never mentioned Peter. He had sealed his whole soul against the boy, not because of any instinctive dislike of Peter, but merely out of the growing hatred of his wife. When he came home, Mrs Fury would ask, ‘Well, have you written to Peter?’ No. He hadn’t written to Peter. What time had he for writing? His family were outside his interests now. Writing letters to his children! H’m! Too busy working, watch and watch, excepting for a couple of evenings off in port. Whenever he arrived home he always managed to go off with Desmond to a theatre. Mr Fury had a great passion for the theatre. They would talk together. ‘Your mother is getting quite impossible lately,’ he would remark to his son. ‘Quite impossible. She’s getting sillier as she grows older.’ Yet he hated to have to say it. But there could be no barriers. There was no stopping of the tide where Fanny was concerned.
‘The whole point, Dad,’ Desmond would reply, ‘the whole point is that Peter never wanted to go away. One of these days you’ll see that I’m right. He only went to please Mother. That’s all. And I don’t think it was fair of Mother to influence him that way.’ He would look straight into his father’s eyes. Mr Fury would mutter under his breath. It was quite unintelligible. His father wondered if Desmond wasn’t right after all. She had tried it once before with Maureen. Maureen ought to be a nurse. She was just cut out for it. Good Lord! Whatever was the woman thinking about, he would say to himself. He looked at his son. Aye. He seemed to know all about it. Then they would return home. She only wanted to mould Peter to her own liking. She was hungry for power. And now she had her way. The boy was gone. Mrs Fury hated Desmond for going off like this. Denny and he must have long talks together. Her whole attitude changed. She became suspicious. What had they been talking about now? ‘You’re always talking together lately,’ she would remark.
Mr Fury would watch the clock. He hated retiring. It was the same old thing, night after night. Dragging up the past. He had said to her one evening after they had retired, ‘Of course, you think everything will sail along grandly, but where’s the money to come from?’ A real poser, he thought. But his wife remained silent. She ignored him. He was glad when sailing day came round again. Glad to get out of the house and back to sea again. It was paradise. On long voyages Mrs Fury wrote to him. All the letters were the same. Peter was mentioned in each one of them. ‘Was he going to write to the boy, or not? Why didn’t he say straight out? Be honest.’ She knew he hated her for this, she would write, but she wasn’t thinking of herself. When had she ever put herself first? Never. After all, he was the boy’s father. Sometimes Mr Fury replied to these letters, sometimes he tore them up unopened and dropped them into the sea. But he never breathed Peter’s name. How she hated her family for this miserable spirit. Or was it just spite? Jealousy? An insane determination to prevent anybody aiming a little higher than themselves? What curious natures they had. Thank God, she was not like them. She asked herself these questions many times. And how she loathed their help. If only she could do it unaided. Periodically Peter wrote home for money. A real struggle. She dared not ask her children. It would mean another row. More insults. Well, she would master all the difficulties. And it would not be the first time. She would sail through this. How strange. She was only beginning to know her family. Whenever Anthony arrived home from sea, she would say:
‘Don’t forget Peter.’
He would take some money from his pocket, fling it on the table, saying, ‘There,’ and that was the end of the matter so far as he was concerned. Like his father, he was glad to be at sea. What was it that drove them from the house? They did not know. Everything had seemed all right until Peter came along. From that time the change in Mrs Fury had been rapid. There was something in the woman, a kind of invisible and insidious poison, that drove her family from her. Desmond had often tried to find out the cause of this change in his mother. But, like the others, he was unsuccessful. As for Dennis Fury, he had given up that problem long ago. Sometimes, when she was alone in the house, she would take her chair over to the corner where her father sat. At times this old man seemed a godsend to her. She used to talk to him of her life, take him into her confidence. He sympathized with his daughter, though there remained with him always a sort of gentle distrust of her, for he could never forgive her for her action of long ago. Thirty-one, nearly thirty-two years had passed since then, but he had not forgotten it. He listened to her day after day.
‘Don’t I do my best?’ she would ask. ‘Haven’t I reared a large family as respectably as I could?’
Of course she had, he would reply. ‘But, Fanny, some of your family are dirt.’ Mrs Fury had never forgotten that remark. It remained imprinted on her mind. She was often puzzled by it. But she could not fathom its meaning. Mr Mangan, before he was finally afflicted, used to go out with her of an afternoon and sit in the park. This was a pleasure to him. He had long sensed his son-in-law’s dislike of him, and he resented it. ‘Fanny,’ he would say, ‘you’re a good woman. But I should never have come here. The Furys are a strange family. So different from our own at home.’ Tears would come into his eyes whenever he thought of his two sons far away in America. What a queer world it was. Families were born, grew up, and then were scattered over the earth. Mrs Fury would affect surprise, even anger. ‘You mustn’t talk like that, Dad,’ she would say, though she knew how keenly the old man felt his obligations. He liked Peter. His grandson Peter was his favourite. This drew father and daughter closer together.
He had helped her too. When he had his little money he had given it unsparingly, unknown to the others. He rather enjoyed it. It gave him a certain satisfaction, as well as a kind of malicious glee in witnessing its effect upon the boy’s brothers. They became inquisitive. Where was their mother getting the help from? Their own was a mere pittance. Who was helping? Instinctively they realized it could only be their grandfather. Mr Fury heard. But he made no mention of it to his wife. From that time he acquired a particular dislike for the old man. He was directly abetting Fanny. And all this was going on behind his back while he was at sea. Once the old man and he had had high words. Peter had just written home for money. Mr Fury himself took in the letter from the postman. Unknown to his wife, he opened it. When he read it he went white with rage. He ran upstairs with the open letter in his hand and flung it on the bed.
‘Read that,’ he said. The woman picked up the letter. But she did not read it. Instead she placed it inside her dress-body. Nothing more was heard of the incident until a wire came from the boy thanking his mother for the money received. Well, he thought, there could be no doubt about it. Her father was behind this. He openly accused the old man of backing up the boy against the rest of the family. Mr Mangan was equal to the occasion. He struggled from his chair, and facing up to his son-in-law remarked: ‘What the hell kind of a man are you? You’ve got the heart of a louse. I gave the boy the money, and I shall continue to do so whilst I have it. You don’t know what a good woman you have. That’s what wrong with you. My God! I saw all this coming. And when, twenty-four years ago, you wrote home to Fanny and said you were “on the ice in New York”, I knew, I knew then what a tragic mistake she had made. Why, man, the Furys are know all over Ireland, and, by God, so are the Mangans. Haven’
t you a heart at all? If you’re incapable of ambitions, for Christ’s sake don’t think that everybody else is like yourself. I’m surprised, Denny, surprised and disgusted.’ Only a month after Mr Fury sailed, the old man was seized with a stroke. From that day he had remained fast in his chair. He had come to live at his daughter’s house, he had seen Peter go off. He had witnessed many things in the seven years since he had seen him go.
Mrs Fury felt a lump come into her throat as she looked at him now. He would never know the boy. How he had changed. He seemed to have grown smaller. His skin was the colour of old parchment, it was dry and leathery like that of a bird. The eyes set beneath the shaggy white brows appeared like two tiny beads. His huge hands wandered about the chair, as though the little life left in him had swum into these hands. They rose and fell, dragged themselves to one arm of the chair, then the other. ‘No.’ thought the woman, ‘he will never recognize him, nor will Peter his grand-dad.’ She tried to conjure up in her imagination the figure of her son as she had last seen him, with his small neat figure dressed in a stiff navy-blue suit, his round red face, his large eyes, brown as her own. She even remembered the design of the college cap he wore. And that little silver cross he wore in the lapel of his coat. But he must have grown. What would he look like? Perhaps he would be tall and erect, like her own mother had been. She could not imagine him stout. None of the Fury family affected obesity. Rather were they lean and wiry, like her own husband, whom thirty years of work down in the bowels of ships had not affected. He was fifty-eight now, and as good as any man half his age. The old man fell asleep. His heavy breathing filled the kitchen.
2
Mrs Fury went into the parlour and sat down. She wanted to collect herself. She laid the telegram on the table, reading its message over and over again. Strange! What could it mean? ‘Peter failed. All my sympathy. Brigid.’ But what could her sister know? Why had not she, the boy’s mother, been informed? It sounded very mysterious. And the suddenness of it. How had her sister learned of this? She simply could not understand. And why had the boy failed? She leaned forward and drew the curtains aside. The street was deserted. Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘I’ll go up to Maureen.’ She immediately got up and went back to the kitchen again. She fastened Mr Mangan into his chair, and drew out the fender from the fire. Then she gave a last look round the kitchen. She had not far to go. Her daughter lived in the next street. She put on her coat and hat and went out the back way. She felt suddenly lonely – she must talk to somebody – she was utterly bewildered. She tormented herself with questions. Why hadn’t Peter written? Perhaps there would be a letter in the next post. Again, the Principal ought to have informed her of this. No! She simply could not make it out. The boy had passed his other examinations brilliantly. Then why this sudden failure? When she reached her daughter’s house she discovered Maureen was out. Should she wait? She looked up and down the street. What a nuisance. Why should Maureen be out the very moment she wanted her most? She knocked again, this time quite loudly. Perhaps she was lying down. Then the next door neighbour put her head out of the window – she looked questioningly at Mrs Fury. ‘Maureen’s gone to the city,’ she said.
Mrs Fury looked up at the woman. ‘To town? Today?’ ‘Yes,’ the woman said. Then the window slammed down again. Mrs Fury retraced her steps. She felt disappointed, even a little hurt. Why should the girl have gone out? Everything seemed to be working the wrong way today. She, Peter’s mother, knew nothing. Everything seemed vague. ‘Well, there must be some explanation,’ she said to herself as she unlocked the back door. ‘Dear me!’ she kept saying, ‘dear me!’ And now she must begin all over again. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, her two hands gripping the table. ‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’ she said, whilst her eyes fell upon the silent figure in the high chair. She had tried so hard, so hard. Her body became suddenly limp. Mr Mangan coughed. ‘Soon be Friday,’ she was thinking, ‘and I shall have to take Dad down to the Office for his pension.’ She sat down on the sofa. She wouldn’t do anything now. Just sit and wait for the post. When the knock came to the door she made a sudden rush into the lobby. There was no letter there. When she opened the door she found Maureen on the step in animated conversation with Mrs Postlethwaite. ‘Why, Maureen,’ she exclaimed, and drew back into the lobby. Maureen came in. Mrs Fury gripped her daughter by the shoulders. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I had a wire from your aunt today saying Peter has failed, and I don’t understand.’ Her voice broke.
‘Oh, Mother!’ said Maureen. They passed into the parlour and sat down. Maureen picked up the telegram. ‘Oh!’ Maureen exclaimed again. She looked up suddenly. ‘Does Dad know?’ The woman nodded her head. Somehow she could not find words to express what she felt at that moment. After a long silence she said: ‘It’s awful. I don’t know anything. Not a line from Peter. Just that wire. I thought there might be a letter in the post this afternoon. When I talked to your father about it he got wild, and went out.’ She drew her hand across her forehead. Maureen looked at her mother. If it was true, then it was a real blow to her. She looked at the telegram again.
After a long silence Maureen rose. She folded the telegram up. ‘Have you told anybody about it yet, Mother?’ she asked.
Mrs Fury did not reply. She was studying her daughter. Was she going off again already? ‘Sit down, Maureen! Sit down. I see little enough of you as it is,’ she said. The young woman sat down again. ‘I told nobody but your father,’ continued Mrs Fury. ‘And I don’t want you to tell anybody, Maureen. Not even Joe.’ She looked into Maureen’s pale face. ‘Not even Joe. I shall tell nobody.’ She stamped her foot with a sudden burst of energy.
Maureen smiled. ‘But everybody’ll know in time, Mother.’
Mrs Fury caught her daughter’s hand in a vice-like grip. ‘Have you any respect left for me at all?’ she asked loudly. ‘Sometimes I think you haven’t! Yes! That’s what I think. You were in town today?’
‘Yes, I was,’ said Maureen.
‘Have you seen Mr Sharpies?’ asked the mother.
‘Not yet. Tomorrow afternoon,’ replied Maureen.
Mrs Fury rose to her feet and began pacing the floor. ‘So you are determined to go back to that factory, then?’
Maureen got up and stood in front of her mother. ‘Yes,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ve quite made up my mind about that.’
‘Oh,’ the mother said. ‘And what about this?’ she remarked laconically, tapping her daughter’s body.
Maureen laughed. ‘I’ll see to that too,’ she said.
‘Well, I just can’t make you out, Maureen,’ went on Mrs Fury. ‘Here you are carrying that man’s child, and now you want to go back to that factory.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk any more about that, Mother,’ Maureen said. The two women stood facing each other in the middle of the floor. Then Mrs Fury exclaimed savagely:
‘I could never make out why you married that fellow. He’s the laughingstock of the neighbourhood.’
Maureen said slowly, and with great emphasis, ‘You’ll know why some day.’
Then she walked out to the kitchen. She looked down at her grandfather. Mrs Fury came in behind her. They both stood looking at Mr Mangan. Not a word was spoken. ‘Of course,’ thought Mrs Fury, ‘she’s not the least bit interested in Peter. I might have known.’
Then Maureen said she must be going. The mother looked at the clock.
‘You aren’t here five minutes yet,’ she said coldly. ‘I wanted to talk to you, Maureen. I wanted to talk to you about a good many things,’ She paused.
‘Joe’ll be in in half an hour,’ Maureen replied.
‘Then you’d best get off,’ said the mother. She stood with her back to Maureen, staring into the glowing coals of the fire. It seemed that in that glowing mass she could see mirrored Maureen’s real thoughts. She heard her cross the kitchen, but did not move. Not until the door closed with a resounding bang did Mrs Fury turn round. She immediately lighted the gas. Well, she might ha
ve known. Yes, even she, Maureen, her only daughter, was unsympathetic. What were her children made of? She was glad now that she had not mentioned Anthony. No! Not if Anthony died that very day would she breathe a word to Maureen. The girl had completely changed. She seemed no longer her own daughter, her flesh and blood, but an utter stranger. For the first time that day Mrs Fury burst out laughing. Why on earth had a woman like Maureen married that fool of a man? Kilkey! Even the name sounded repulsive and ugly. Kilkey. She had met him once. She began to get her father’s supper ready. This consisted of a boiled egg beaten up in milk, to which she added bread. Mrs Fury always tended her father. She fed him, washed and dressed him, and took him out occasionally. The rest of the family had no time for old Mr Mangan. Having made his meal ready, she produced a large spoon and towel. Then she drew a chair up to where he sat. She tucked the towel under the old man’s chin and began to feed him. After a while her hand moved automatically from the plate to her father’s mouth. Her thoughts kept taking excursionary flights. One moment Anthony loomed up largely, the next moment he disappeared and Peter took his place. What a peculiar family she had reared. More and more, so it seemed to her, they appeared to be taking after their father. When such thoughts took shape, she felt all the more keenly the bond that held her to her father. In moments of isolation and utter loneliness she clung to Mr Mangan as to a rock. He was a sort of refuge. Now she dare not think any more. She must drive Peter out of her mind. He was the last, the one in whom she imagined she had vested the best that was in herself. No. She must not think about it. She must just wait – wait for news. Of course, it might not be true. She contented herself with this. It might not be true. Mr Mangan having finished his supper, she wiped his mouth and took the towel from under his chin. Then she went into the back kitchen and returned a moment later with a tin bowl of water, a flannel, and a clean towel. She washed her father’s face and hands. Then she cleared the things away and went upstairs. She made ready his bed. Mr Mangan was becoming more burdensome than ever. Mrs Fury came downstairs. She unwound the leather belt. Then she placed her hands under her father’s shoulders. Hoisting the man over her shoulder, she carried him upstairs. She undressed Mr Mangan, tucked him safely in the bed, and picking up the lighted candle she held it aloft, at the same time bending over to look into his face. Mr Mangan’s eyes were wide open, but they betrayed nothing. Not a muscle of his face moved. His breast rose and fell. ‘Good-night, Father,’ Mrs Fury said. Then she left the room. As she went slowly downstairs she sighed. That was done. What a relief. In the lobby she stood, hesitant, listening. The house was silent. Mrs Fury decided that she must go out. She could not sit in that kitchen another minute. She blew out the candle. Then she dressed herself in her outdoor clothes. She wrote a pencilled note to Mr Fury and left this pinned to the mantel-border, so that her husband would see it on his return. She closed the back door, and left by the front one. She stood on the step for a moment, looking up and down the street. It was quite dark. Then she slipped the door key into a hole in the wall, and walked quickly away. It began to rain. The woman hurried round the corner, just in time to see a tram coming down the road, its bell clanging loudly, whilst in front there galloped at break-neck speed a light horse and lorry. Mrs Fury boarded the tram.
