An End and a Beginning

by James Hanley

  “Always knew you would come here, and I would have felt it deeply if you hadn’t. Night after night I’ve lain in bed, and I’ve thought of all the questions you’d ask me, until I knew them all by heart. I could recite the whole thing from the beginning to end. Been living here seven years now, and I’m settled to it. Dermod is a fine lad, I’m proud of him. Perhaps one day you’ll see him, I say perhaps——” He emphasised the word. “As for Maureen, I’ve never quite given her up I mean—yes, I can see you laughing there, but I tell you that for a long time I’ve had a feeling she’ll walk in here one fine day. I’m an old man, and you may think me an old fool. Maureen’s no girl, either. Is she? I manage a bit of a job now and again. Thank God I can still do it. That’s always on the top of my mind. And by the way I’ll give you Anthony’s address. You know he’s on the China station, seems to have settled to that sort of life. They’ve a little girl, must be ten now. Oonagh. Father Moynihan’s still at the same church, old now, very grey, but still a charming man. You already know about Desmond. He’s never stopped getting on, you can imagine anything about him except laziness. Lives in Ralston Park now, I think.”

  He watched the big man in the chair, watched for signs, but as he listened Peter’s expression remained wooden, but behind this lay the dominant thought, the single thought, “Get out.”

  “And mother?” asked Peter suddenly, and it came like a shock to Kilkey.

  How he would persist in shouting at the top of his voice. “I’m not as deaf as that,” Kilkey said.

  “Well?”

  “I’d rather not, Peter, please don’t ask me.”

  “Tell me about her,” Peter replied, and there was something in the tone of his voice that now genuinely frightened the old man.

  Kilkey got up and went across to the window. “Thought I heard a knock,” he said, drawing aside a curtain, peeping out.

  “Nobody knocked. Why can’t you tell me?”

  “I’m an old man,” Kilkey said. “Listen! What good can it do you? She’s at rest. And it’s hardly fair on me. That’s the sort of thing you should hear from Father Moynihan, he could better explain it. I’ve nothing to hide,” he added, his voice was full of protest. “Can’t you be satisfied with that? You know what happened, I wrote and told you. After she left your father——”

  “She told me that herself.”

  In a loud, protesting voice, one hand waving in the air, Kilkey cried, “Why do you ask me this?”

  “Delaney said you would tell me.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “He might have spared my feelings. I always admired your mother.”

  “Christ man, why can’t you say something, what are you hiding?” Peter could no longer control his rage. There was something antagonizing about this doddering old man, his deafness, his meandering, his waving arms, it seemed hard to believe that it was really Joseph Kilkey. How changed he was. He felt an irritation, a sense of frustration. “Delaney could have told me anyhow,” he thought, “why don’t I get out of here?”

  “What’s wrong with you? What’s taken possession of you, Peter? I never wanted to tell you, but you drag it out of me, and it won’t help anybody, least of all you. Sit down. Cool yourself,” and he went back to his chair and sat down. He felt a sudden extraordinary calm. He reached out for the pipe, lit it, and relaxed in the chair.

  “You remember Father Moynihan?”

  “I do.”

  “About three years after your mother went to the nuns, something happened. She went there of her own free will. I tried to persuade her to live with me, but she wouldn’t, and I never pressed her. She wanted peace and quiet, and she got it. I used to visit her. She seemed contented. She enquired after you all, there was never a feeling of resentment, never. It was a beautiful place, and the food was good. The family was scattered for good, and she realized that. But often she cried about your father. Still she was calm, she was happy. It was a great relief to me to see her so contented, and after a while she ceased to mention her family, only your father. Yes, he was the only person she ever spoke about. She changed, she looked different. All her storming was over. Well, as I was saying, about three years after she went there I had a letter from Father Moynihan. A young woman brought me the letter, it was just before I left the old house. Father Moynihan asked me to go and see him. I went. A nice man, I always liked him, and he thought a lot of your father and mother. The news he had for me I did not at first believe, and looking back on it now, I suppose it’s the only time I ever saw a miracle fall out of a man’s mouth. ‘Denis Fury,’ he said, ‘is not dead. He’s alive, he’s here. A wreck, and his memory has gone’.”

  Kilkey paused to relight his pipe. “A battered old man, indeed, long thought to be drowned, who for over two years had been lying in a seaman’s hospital at a place called Bahia. An old man who had travelled all the way back by ship with two other survivors, I still could not believe it. But it was true enough. The next morning I saw your father. He didn’t know me, he recognised nobody. The news had to be broken to your mother. It was broken to her, in the simplest way. They let him walk into the room where your mother was standing, and they closed the door on them. She had to be warned what to expect, and she expected it. Actually she was re-united to a child. The first few days were terrible. The shock, the sight of him, and he was so helpless, so very useless. He could do little or nothing for himself. Your mother sent for me, and I went to see them. I was very moved when I saw him, but as I say he didn’t know me, he never knew me any more. A bundle of rags and bones. No more than that. He was full of a mystery that couldn’t be solved. He was a broken man. And yet he was alive, behind the rags, behind the mystery of him. He’d been picked up after being in the sea nearly five days, and they could do nothing with the boy they found in his arms, a young sailor lad who had been making his first trip in the Ronsa. Slowly, oh very slowly indeed, he mended, bit by bit, inch by inch you might say. He began to eat. And then the real terror began, so that you thought this man was only safe when he was starving, as though the food and drink had some effect upon him. He cried in the night, he screamed, he roared. The nightmares were so bad that they had to keep shifting him from one part of the building to another. Finally they allowed your mother to be with him altogether. He quietened, he sank back into a sort of coma, he became very ill. Your mother never left him, night or day, never complained, never uttered a word. Father Moynihan said your father was saved by her silence. After a while they went out walks together. Then one day, God knows it was an unlucky day indeed, for the thought came into your mother’s head to travel north. But you already know what happened. I told you in a letter. They went all the way to visit you, and on the very step, so to speak, your father collapsed, and they came all the way back again. It was a stupid thing to do, but a brave thing. One night your father went quite mad and tried to throw himself out of the window. He had by some accident or other got hold of a small mirror that your mother had hidden away from him, and he saw himself for the first time. It may have been the great scar that ran right across his head and half way down his neck. It may have been a sight of it, I don’t know, but it took your mother and two nuns all their time to hold him down. Long after that she told me it was not the scar, but something else. He had come to her one dark afternoon when she was reading, and had said to her, ‘I’m useless. I’m finished.’ Nothing your mother said would change his mind. And he cried out, ‘I can’t work any more, what’ll I do. I can’t work.’

  “For a whole week your mother and a nurse sat by his bed. They did not expect him to recover. As to what he had been through, well nobody would ever know. It was a whole month before I saw them again, I’d been very busy at the ships, and I couldn’t ever refuse what was thrown my way. When I went to see them he had quite calmed down, and from a glance at your mother I knew then who was master. She drew me aside, she had more news. Your Aunt Brigid was ill, very ill. You know of course that your grandfather died a y
ear previous to that, and I suppose you know that your aunt found his money after all, nearly twelve hundred pounds. She was quite alone now. What did she want? She wanted your mother to go and live with her. She begged her to go. It would have been difficult for her to have refused. I believe that. It was natural, it was Christian. There was a little note in your aunt’s hand at the bottom of the letter that had been written for her by a friend, and it was this little note that did the trick. ‘You know, Fanny,’ she wrote, ‘It’s your duty, and it’s due to you, you must now come home.’ Just those few words.

  “Well, just a week later, they set off, and I went with them. Father Moynihan had begged me to take them across. It was very difficult, considering the condition of your father, and we were so afraid at the time that as he crossed from the quay to the gangway of the boat your mother threw a shawl over your father’s head, for she had a queer idea that a sight of the sea might terribly upset him. But we managed it, and we made him comfortable in the little cabin. I thanked God to see them both there, at last, on their way home, for your mother, God rest her soul, she spent half a lifetime raving about going back there, and you began to wonder why she ever left it. But I never saw a happier woman, and I can see her now, as though it was only yesterday. Her hair was quite grey, her face all wrinkled up, but she was as straight as a guardsman, like she always was. I sat talking to her. Your father was very quiet and deep asleep. I thought of your mother going over to that miserable creature, so very selfish, but there it was, she was dangerously ill. Your mother cried. It was very human.”

  Kilkey’s head had fallen right back, and now he appeared to be staring up at the ceiling, a strained expression on his face, as though this act of remembering required some great physical endeavour, and not once during the long narration had he looked at the other in the chair.

  “When the siren blew we both got up and left the cabin. We stood at the rail. The deck was crowded with passengers, and in the gathering darkness they seemed like shadows. I remember staring down into the dark, glistening water. There was a roar as the gangway came up. The hawsers came clear of the bitts, and the whole night was filled with shouts. Before we realized it, the old boat had turned her head seawards, and the first beat of her engines came clearly up to us as we stood there, not speaking, not moving. She blew three times. We were clear of the quay. A wind came up, and I advised your mother to get back to the cabin. I took her back and saw her comfortable before I went back on deck. I happened to know an engineer aboard her, and he’d kindly given me two blankets, so I bedded down against the old bulwark and was quite cosy. But I never slept. I could think of nothing except your mother going home, of that now useless man beside her, and of all the water that had poured under the bridges. I got up. I began pacing the deck. It began to rain. I saw the shore lights dim, and the engine noise was suddenly very loud. I knew we were well at sea, for I could hear the water mad at her bows, and the lights flashing in the distance.

  “Suddenly your mother was beside me. I couldn’t understand. At first I thought your father had had a relapse, but no, your mother had come out to talk. She left your father fast asleep, and came out to talk to me. I thought she would never stop, she talked a lifetime over, and back again, she talked and talked. She even laughed, and I think the skipper on the bridge must have wondered what was going on down on that dark foredeck. It rang out so loud and clear in the darkness. She travelled right through the family, and then her mother’s family and then her father’s. Somehow your mother seemed suddenly bright, and shining with living. It made me feel glad I’d come, though at first I hadn’t wanted to. After a while she lay up against me, and we shared the blankets. This seemed the only thing to do, for she was quite determined to leave your father sleeping peacefully. She must have dropped off to sleep very suddenly, and I began to doze myself. I remember waking up and feeling terribly cold. It was growing light. I got up and joined a queue, and after nearly half an hour I managed to get some hot tea. Some men were singing in the saloon, and I supposed they’d been there most of the night. Then all of a sudden, there it was. Cork. A fine old place, and the loveliest little harbour I ever saw. And how clean the place was, like the whole city had been scrubbed white.

  “Then suddenly everybody was crowding the rails. I took your mother across, and we stopped there watching the old boat draw nearer and nearer to the quay. She whispered in my ear, ‘I was born here.’ The gangway came aboard, everybody was suddenly on the move. We went back to the cabin for your father, and we waited till the other’s had all gone. Then we started off with your father. It seemed hours before we got him to the bottom of that gangway. People were kind though, very kind, and I think every jarvey in the place was ready to run them up the Mall. On the quay your mother suddenly stopped and stared about her, saying never a word. I had one arm through that of your father, she the other.”

  Peter Fury sat motionless. He did not once glance at Kilkey, and indeed he gave the impression that he had not even been listening. So still and silent did he sit that the old man might well have been addressing himself, and now that he had finished speaking the silence of the room seemed heightened. In the house next door a child could be heard crying, a big lorry tumbled past the window, coals clattered to the hearth.

  “What else?” But the other did not answer.

  “What else, Mr. Kilkey?” There was something cold and ruthless in this demanding voice.

  “You know,” protested the old man. “I told you. I wrote and told you.”

  “I know nothing.”

  “Your aunt came through her long illness,” said Kilkey, “she is now eighty-three.”

  “And mother?” Peter said.

  “I will tell you no more,” Kilkey said.

  “You won’t?”

  “No.”

  Peter Fury got up and stood looking down at the old man, waiting.

  “It was an accident—an accident——” Kilkey said.

  “Please tell me.”

  “I can’t—I’m an old man, I can’t be bothered, I’m tired, leave me alone. I can’t tell you.”

  Peter Fury picked up his cap, and without another word he left the house.

  2

  He regretted his action the moment he heard the door close behind him. He had half a mind to go back, to knock, to apologise to the old man. He walked quickly down the street, and stood on the corner, looking towards the city. Gelton stretched out before him as wide as the ocean. Gelton was noisy, tumultuous, lost in the tumbling rounds of its own energy. He suddenly remembered the two people who had met him outside the gate. A man with an umbrella, a woman in a car. They had vanished as quickly as they had appeared. Gelton had swallowed them up. As he stood there, staring aimlessly about him, he had a sudden feeling that he did not belong here any more. He felt like a ghost. He seemed hardly aware that he had begun to move, that he was following his feet, southwards.

  “What shall I do? Where shall I go?”

  Perhaps it was too early even to think. The noise appalled. People fascinated him, and often he would stop and look after someone or other, and once or twice as he stood staring at a woman, passers-by eyed him suspiciously. He kept close to the kerb. It seemed the safest place. Here one was left alone. He walked street after street, road upon road, he was filled with unflagging energy on this aimless walk. He knew that he was drawing nearer and nearer to the city. Then he stopped dead. He thought of taking a tram, a bus, even a taxi, and looked about him. A tram stopped conveniently enough, he made to board it, but suddenly withdrew, and hurried to the kerb again. He went up to the bus stop and waited for the one that he would never take. Perhaps he would stop a passing taxi. Yes, that was the best thing to do. He would be private again, shut in, away from people. He approached the gates of a public park. He saw a taxi, but he could not make up his mind. His hand went up into the air, and quickly down again. He went into the park. This was as silent as the sea. He passed by a few old men on benches, a girl reading a book, and coming to
an empty bench at the end of the path he sat down. The moment he did so he felt relieved. “I shouldn’t have got mad with the old man,” he thought. “No, I shouldn’t have done that. Perhaps I’ll go back there later to-day.”

  He sat on this bench a whole hour, motionless, staring fixedly at his feet. And then, in a moment he gave in, he could no longer hold back his tears. He cried as he sat, staring downwards, his hands pressed deep into his pockets. He felt he could not look upwards, he must wait, he must be patient. After a while it would be all over. He heard footsteps go by, heard a child laughing in the distance, a mother calling, a barking dog. “What shall I do? Where shall I go?”

  Furtively he raised his head, looked right and left. The park was once more drowned in its own silence. “I must go over there,” he told himself, “yes, I must go over to Ireland.”

  Immediately he got up and walked out of the park. He would walk towards the docks; he had a feeling that once he saw the ship he could make up his mind. It stirred a kind of resolve in him, quickened his steps, and suddenly in the distance he saw the mast of the first ship. Out in the river a tug hooted, a great siren blew. As he drew nearer the docks he felt imprisoned again. Everywhere he looked people were hurrying. They filled the pavements, they crowded the buses, they hurried to the trains. From this maze of energy he stepped quickly into a small court. Except for a single cotton-laden lorry, the place was deserted. At the bottom he beheld more masts, and now very suddenly the funnels of half a dozen ships. He noted the funnel markings, now he knew where to go. Resolve strengthened. Perhaps after a while he would feel like those hurrying people, there would be a sense of direction, he would know what he really wanted to do. He slipped quietly through a dock gate and stared up at the first ship he saw. Yes, this was the dock, the self-same dock. It had not changed in all that time. There was a small wooden hut to the left of this gate and he went up to it and glanced in through the open door. A man wearing a blue serge suit was seated at a desk. He spoke to him. The man got up and came to the door.