The Mill for Grinding Old People Young

by Glenn Patterson

  She spotted me before I spotted her, trying to hold her ground, despite the buffeting on all sides, at a point almost midway between the shipping agent’s office and the boat. Her right hand started up instinctively, only for the left to catch it before it opened into a wave, but that movement was all that was needed. I had eyes for nothing and no one else.

  So desperate was I to reach her that I trod on the skirts of a woman – I will not pretend that I saw her face – whose husband without hesitation swung a fist – nor did I see that coming, but felt it only, glancing off my right ear – shouting after me that he would punch me good and proper if ever he got the hold of me . . . So desperate was I to reach her that I almost collided with Peggy Barclay, who had at that moment turned from saying her goodbyes and who with the barest of nods to me carried on into the throng. I ricocheted from her straight into Maria’s luggage. I caught a hatbox, so light it must have been empty, and replaced it on the trunk on which it had balanced, unintentionally rebuilding the low wall between us. Maria, in the hat presumably that the box had contained, the only hat I had ever seen her wear, a little smudged at the trim even now, tilted her head, unable to meet my eye.

  “You must not let them drive you away like this,” I said.

  “No one is driving me anywhere.” It had been so long since I had heard her speak I had almost forgotten how marked was her accent, and how mesmeric.

  “If it were not for you,” I said, “someone would certainly have died this morning, either me, or . . .” – for all that the people around us were caught up in their own grief (Liverpool in those days might have been Labrador), we were still in public – “. . . you know who. It is thanks you deserve, not condemnation.”

  “I did not know either that anyone was condemning me.”

  The top of my ear throbbed where the irate husband’s fist had connected, or had failed to connect as intended. I did not want to think what “good and proper” would feel like.

  A porter skidded his barrow to a halt beside us. He wore a cap turned backwards to protect his neck from the sun; his brow as a consequence was scarlet. It was a lesson in something.

  “These ones here, Missis?” he asked Maria, and shaped to lift the trunk with the box still on top.

  “Wait!” I said, before Maria could speak.

  From his crouched position, the porter looked at me and then at Maria. “A minute or two more,” I said, to her as much as to him, and Maria nodded. The porter pulled himself up by the rope round the waist of his trousers, shook his head, before hauling his barrow on to the next tableau of despond: “These ones here?”

  A cloud of starlings passed overhead. Maria’s eyes followed their flight. The starlings banked and turned.

  “I thought that you at least would have understood what I was trying to do,” I said. “The Grand Gesture!”

  Her gaze remained fixed on the starlings’ display a moment more, then she looked at me for the first time full in the face, leaning in to reinforce her point. “And I thought you would have understood what I was trying to say. ‘Murder’ was not it.”

  I had known from the moment my grandfather caught me in his arms at the Giant’s Ring that I had been foolish. Only now did I realise how far back my folly extended. I felt, more acutely than ever I had in her presence, how short a time was not-quite-eighteen years on this earth.

  I had nothing else at my disposal. “Stay with me,” I said. “I beg you. Stay.”

  Her expression changed, from resoluteness to helplessness. “I cannot. Matters are coming to a head at home.”

  “You have had your letter?”

  She averted her gaze again. “Not that letter, no, but I know he will have gone to where the fighting is fiercest. The Russians are closing in now on Warsaw. I could not forgive myself if I remained any longer like this, hidden away. Mrs Barclay has lent me the money, which I will repay to the last farthing.”

  Her eyes, as she said this, flicked to the right, and looking round I thought I caught a glimpse of the familiar black tulle at a discreet remove, among the bonnets and the tall hats and the porters’ caps.

  “But anything might happen to you,” I said. “And you must see it yourself, the cause is already lost.”

  She shrugged. “For now, maybe.”

  “So stay for now,” I began to say, but our particular porter friend returned at that moment, the peak of his cap now determinedly to the fore. “Are you ready yet, Missis?” he asked, and Maria without further reference to me told him that she was.

  I stood by while she directed the man, who was used no doubt to everyone knowing his job better than he did when it came to their own luggage. “Be sure not to lift that by the straps,” and, “Take care, the lid of this one is loose.”

  “Right, I hear you. Right, right.”

  When he had gone there was only space between us. I took a step into it; took another.

  “Please.” She held up a hand. It was shaking. “Come no closer.”

  I did as she bid and stopped. Already, though, I was within an arm’s length of her. I reached out and with my fingertips touched her cheek. Her eyes, almost despite her, closed. She rolled her head a little to the right, presenting me with the angle of her jaw, the softness behind her ear, the taut tendons of her neck. I poured all the love I possessed into those caresses. “Remember our walks, how we sat beneath that chestnut tree, the two of us,” they said. “Remember that one night.” If I could only keep her like this a while longer, my fingers curling now round the other side of her face, in underneath her bonnet, my thumb stroking the corner of her mouth, her lips . . .

  She took my hand suddenly in hers. She smothered the thumb the fingers the knuckles the wrist with kisses. She pressed the palm flat against her face. Her eyelashes were wet. I felt as much as heard the words that her mouth formed.

  “The world is too good that we will not meet again somewhere in it.”

  And then almost before I was aware of what was happening she had let my hand fall and was pushing through the crowd towards the boat. I called her name – guldered it. Every head, it seemed, turned except hers. I caught sight of the back of her bonnet twice more as she ascended the gang-board. Only when she had reached the deck did she look round. She completed the wave that she had started when she had first seen me. I raised my own hand in response, mirrored the action of hers in touching my fingers to my lips then turning them out towards her. Then the wind gusted and the deck was obscured by smoke from the Hibernia’s funnels. When the smoke cleared a young mother had taken Maria’s place at the rail and was holding up a baby to someone on the quay for whom that red face was the embodiment of love freely given. The baby squeezed its eyes shut and cried.

  Above the howls, above the last shouted farewells, above the racket now of the engines, a bell was ringing. Deckhands drew up the board and wound in the mooring ropes loosed by their counterparts on the quayside. The smoke from the funnels grew denser, the waving, all around me, of handkerchiefs, more frantic, and these alone signalled the exact moment of departure. By the time the smoke had thinned out again the Hibernia was already abreast of Ritchie’s Dock, its stern beginning the leftward drift in preparation for the first bend in the channel. One by one the handkerchiefs were returned to their pockets, some having been applied en route to noses in sudden need of blowing, and the handkerchief owners faced again towards the town – those, that is, who made it past the doors of the Donegall Quay Tavern. The dockhands and the porters, too, had turned their attention to other tasks. When all was said and done, it was just a boat. There would be another from Liverpool putting in the day after tomorrow, another sailing out at the same time two days after that, to say nothing of the boats coming and going in between from London, Dublin, Greenock, Glasgow: more beginnings and endings and stories picked up where they had been left off days or weeks or years before.

  A hand gripped my shoulder, spinning me round: a man’s face I could not recall ever having seen before, passing from angry to angrie
r by reason of my very blankness. In the next instant his fist had slammed into my left ear and his face disappeared again in the redness that flooded my vision. Through the roaring in my head I heard the voice snarl that that would teach me to shove a lady so, ripping her dress!

  I staggered about the quay till the redness gradually bled away. The roar, though, got worse instead of better. It was a minute or two before I realised that it was not now all confined to my head. There was cheering coming from somewhere up the town, a great siphoning off in that direction of people who had lingered on the quays; even a few of those who had been making for the tavern checked back out. I caught several times the word “pillars” being shouted, as incongruous in that context as a pair of parakeets among the starlings that continued to clot and swirl overhead. And only then did I make sense of the meat-carter’s vision: not a temple being dismantled, but a church being erected. I remembered the letter I had picked up from the hall table. I tried five pockets before I found it. The words danced on the page until I stared them down. “In haste, Old Friend, I called at your door this morning, but the household was in a confusion and no one could give me a sensible report of you. (Perhaps you are gone from town: you did not respond to my last.) I had hoped to give you more notice of the Spectacle, but Boyd only laid the plan before me late last night . . .” The streets being emptier than usual, that Derby Day, Millar’s portico was on the move.

  And I would have moved then myself to witness it, but there was another noise competing with the cheering to dislodge the roar from my head. I turned and took half a dozen shaky steps to the edge of the quay. The Hibernia was in position now to push on up the channel, or ought to have been. Something was wrong. The engines were straining themselves to a whine, but the steamer was not responding. I watched a minute more to make sure that this was not some further disturbance of the senses brought on by the blow to my head. A horn sounded: three long moans. A couple of dockhands hurried back to where I stood.

  “She has run into the sandbank,” said one.

  “Is she in danger?” I asked, alarmed.

  “No,” said his companion, who had, I only now noticed, perched on his head a small black silk hat, “but I should say she is stuck fast.”

  I tried to run, but my legs went from under me. The bigger of the dockhands helped me to my feet. “Too much to drink at the races today?”

  “Watch me,” I said and took off the second time with more success, but little grace, lurching along the quay.

  I was heart-scared of taking my eye off the boat and though I was forced to veer away from the riverside on to Corporation Street until I was around the first of the shipbuilding yards, I managed to keep sight of the funnels at least, which despite all their belching black smoke remained firmly fixed on the County Down skyline, like a premonition of the town to come. The watchman at the graving docks beyond the yard was in the Ballast Board’s employ. (I wrote his fifteen shillings’ pay in the ledger every week and every week received his firm X in acknowledgement.) Far from challenging, he saluted me as I passed through the gate, shouting a greeting that did not reach me, but appeared to please him greatly. A three-master sat high and dry in the smaller of the graving docks, its keel half tarred. The other dock was empty. I came alongside the water again at the border of the Board’s grounds and the next shipyard, the timber yard beyond.

  The Hibernia was not more than a hundred and fifty yards distant. Passengers had come out on to the deck, or had not had the opportunity to quit it before the impact. They clustered together, in threes and fours, looking over the ship’s rail. Below them, a number of small craft were already closing in, coming from the port, a Harbour Master’s ensign prominent among them. (Shaw, the south-side master, had lost the coin toss in the end to Courtney of the north on the best of seven.) It was a race against time and – always and ever, always and ever – tide. The longer the Hibernia remained stuck the less water there would be in the channel to float it free. I scrutinised the groups at the rail as nearly as I could at that distance – the baby was there, less red in the face, in the arms of some gallant who had relieved the mother of her burden – but could see no one resembling Maria.

  Minutes passed, became an hour . . . there was a renewed outbreak of cheers and whistles from the direction of the town: the last of the pillars arriving at their destination, perhaps (I wonder were Duff and Jackson abroad that day? I wonder did they stop to watch?), or the return from the Maze of the lucky few and the many more determined to try their luck again next year . . . an hour became two hours then three. Still the little boats flitted about the prow, still the Hibernia’s engines grumbled, and now and then growled; still the water level fell. As dusk gathered and the larger of the vessels that had been dancing attendance began tacking back towards the quays before they too became stranded, Maria appeared.

  Although I have asked myself the question almost daily since, I cannot account for how she knew where to find me, but from the first moment she walked out on to the deck, a shawl now, deep red, about her shoulders, she was looking directly towards where I was standing. Unless, as someone else had once said, I was by wonderful accident exactly where I needed to be.

  The engines at last fell silent, all hope of effective action abandoned for the night. We could have called out to one another, but did not. We would soon have exhausted ourselves, and what was there after all left to say? So we passed the whole of that night in silent communion, face to face across the water. I had no proof, of course, that she remained there without interruption: the lights of the town did not extend that far and thick drifts of cloud prevented Nature’s own night-light from assisting much. At odd moments too I must have lapsed into sleep where I stood, or, eventually (for even without my brain being rearranged I was on my last legs), sat. At other moments, however, a gap appeared long enough for the moon to pick her out, shawl each time pulled a little tighter than the time before.

  Between us – I am certain of it – we kept the vigil.

  It was still night when the tide turned and the channel began to fill again and the Hibernia’s engines coughed themselves back to life. The smaller craft returned at daybreak and a short time later, heralded by more smoke and noise, a motorised tug appeared in the Lough on the seaward side. The rescue this time was quickly accomplished, the boat borne off like a leaf in the jaws of so many ants. The moon in surrendering the sky had dragged the clouds with it and the sun rising behind the Hibernia was from its first showing above the funnels almost impossible to look into, but I told myself that if she did not quit her post I would not close my eyes, would not, would not, whatever the cost, I lost her finally not to darkness but to dazzle, trying to keep the boat in sight, until I could not distinguish between the Lough, the Lagan, the tears brimming up inside me, filling my head to bursting.

  III

  Monday, 27th December 1897

  Report to E. S. Finnigan Esq., City Coroner

  The telephone rang at twenty minutes to nine on Saturday morning last, 25th December (Christmas Day). I was at first amused, on taking the receiver, to find myself addressed by Sir Gilbert Rice’s housekeeper, Mrs Mawhinney, knowing how uncertain that lady was of the apparatus, but she only had to say Sir Gilbert’s name for that amusement to turn to alarm. I understood from the torrent of words that poured from her that her employer had not responded when she had knocked on his door at half past seven, that she had thought to let him lie given the lateness of his going to bed the night before (although he had been in my company and left it at a reasonable hour), but that when she received no response at half past eight she had been sufficiently concerned to let herself into the room. Here she gave a cry so piercing – and so irrefutable in its import – that I almost dropped the telephone. I asked her, when she had recovered herself a little, if she had summoned a doctor and being assured that she had told her I would be with her presently.

  My own household was running on a reduced staff, owing to the holiday, and it was some time before I
could organise a carriage. On my arrival at the house – it was by now a little after a quarter to ten – I was met in the hallway by Mrs Mawhinney herself. I accompanied her directly to the master bedroom, situated on the front left of the property to look at it from the outside, the right when approached from the landing. The room was dark, the air heavy with oil fumes, the lamp on the table by the bed having been left to burn itself out in the course of the night. Sir Gilbert was lying on one hip, his back somewhat curved and turned to the door. His head, from where I stood, was not yet visible, appearing to have slipped forward off the pillow on to his chest. Any remaining hope I had had as I crossed town that the housekeeper had been mistaken was instantly dispelled. He was plainly dead.

  The realisation seemed to hit Mrs Mawhinney with renewed force, for she sank all at once to the floor and it was with the utmost difficulty that I got her to her feet again, neither of us being in the first flush of youth and that lady, in her embarrassment at her display of emotion (the more understandable when you consider how long she had been in Sir Gilbert’s employ), being half inclined to let the carpet swallow her completely.

  Dr Gordon then arrived, with seasonal apologies for his lateness. He went straight to the bedside and took Sir Gilbert’s wrist in his hand, more it appeared by rote than in hope. After only a matter of seconds he released the arm again and reached out with his first two fingers as though to lower the eyelids. He dropped to his knees, then went out of sight, I assume to examine the chamber pot, which evidently contained nothing that could aid in his assessment, for when he reappeared he asked Mrs Mawhinney to go over again the circumstances of her discovery. As she was rehearsing the knock on the door etc., Dr Gordon lifted from the bed a foolscap notebook, which Mrs Mawhinney, interrupting her account, identified as her employer’s journal. It was, she said, his custom to attend to it last thing each night.