An End and a Beginning

by James Hanley

  “How many brothers did you say you had, my son?”

  “Three.”

  “Where are they now?”

  I told him. I was glad I told him, it was coming out, I felt I would soon be free.

  “Is any of your family in Gelton now?”

  “Not now,” I said, “not now”, and only then, in that very moment, did I realize that it was true, that we were scattered, that it was the end.

  “I was thinking of going to America,” I said.

  “You have friends there?”

  “Some kind of relations,” I said.

  I hadn’t the slightest intention of going. I’d made up my mind. It was just something to say, it gave me time, I was thinking of the other thing. Suddenly he left his chair and came over to me. He leaned down, and looked at me, saying quietly, “I knew, of course. We see so much, so many, a certain look you carry, such idle hands, such a drab suit, and I can see the skull through your hair. There’s always a parting blow, it’s like branding a steer, their final mark. How long were you in prison?”

  “Fifteen years to the day.”

  “A long time. What happened?”

  “I killed an old woman,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “In Gelton.”

  “Why?”

  I shut my eyes, and it was too soon to answer. “Tell him. Let him have the lot,” I thought, feeling my way in, feeling my way up, crawling backwards. And one after another the voices struck at my ear.

  It is another ship, but the sea is the same, the fire. It sails home, it docks, my father goes homewards. A door opens. My mother is there. The face is the same, the eyes, they look in the same direction, beyond him, his sea, the room, this house, the city. “Well, indeed,” my father said, seeing me, smiling, embracing me, pushing me clear, crossing to where my mother was standing. It means go, and I go, I am garbed, willed to a future, I am very young, my nature hides from me, I am locked up in my mother’s dream. I climb the stairs, and half-way, I halt.

  “You did not tell me,” my father said.

  “No, Denny, I did not. How could I? You were at sea.”

  “I am always at sea. Tell me what it means?”

  “Peter has gone for the priesthood. It is my dearest wish.”

  “And his also?” I counted five hundred in my head in the following silence.

  “I am talking to you, woman.”

  “His also.”

  “He will never be a priest,” my father said.

  “He will, Denny, I know he will.”

  “Rubbish. I never heard the like. Behind my back.”

  I went into my room. I knew he would come. I waited, afraid, torn between the two of them. He came in. I was seated on my bed. He sat by me. The room is full of ships and smells, a hard hand on my own. “Why have you gone there? Is this what you wear in your first year? Are you too young? Am I too old? Don’t I understand. Tell me about it.”

  I broke open the afternoon for him, our secret fell out. “Your mother wished this, son? tell me, truly? Or did you wish it?”

  “I wish nothing except not to hurt mother,” I said.

  He ran his hands down my black uniform, he got up, he patted my head. “Then I admire your feelings,” he said. “I will say no more. If I had had the choosing you would have sailed in the ship.”

  “Yes, father, I know.” He held my face up in his cupped hand. “What did you want?”

  “I don’t know what I want, father,” I said, and it was the only answer.

  Later the ship sailed, to the same sea, it is always the same, it will never be different. And I have a new name. I am fourteen and I am called “the priest”.

  My brother Desmond bites on the word. “Has the priest gone out? Has he returned? Has he gone away? When will he be home again? How much will it cost this term?”

  My brother Anthony cries “senseless” and my sister, “waste”.

  My garb is now my skin, and I come and go, across the sea and back again. And I come back to the house that grows strange, and I go away from it. My brothers do not like it and I know. I sit in silence, I feel I have not the right to speak. I eat in silence, they watch me. Desmond smiles.

  “I never could take to black crows,” he said, left the table and went to the door.

  “One day you will be struck dead for your blasphemy,” my mother said.

  He turned at the door, looked at her. “I shall take good care to look as I am being struck down,” he said. He went out.

  After my mother has gone out I turn to my sister. “Maureen?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “What have I done?”

  “Done? Nothing, Peter, nothing. Why?”

  “I thought I had committed a crime, I mean being where I am, doing what mother wanted me to do.”

  “It is not your fault, dear. Forget it.”

  “Forget what?”

  “The whole thing.”

  I am fond of my sister, often I leaned upon her. I leaned now. “What whole thing, Maureen? Tell me, what is it? Why am I hated now?”

  “Nobody hates you, dear, don’t be so silly about it. You see Desmond and Anthony don’t like it, it’s the cost. To everybody.”

  “The cost?”

  “The cost.”

  “How much, Maureen, how much?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Who will pay, Maureen?”

  “God only knows, I don’t. You see, dear, things have happened. Anthony is now out in the world, he’s changed, so has Desmond. Let me whisper something in your ear,” and she drew very close to me. Her skin was so soft, her hair silken, scented. “It is not fair to father.”

  I catch each word, I hide it away, lock it up. In another place, where it is quiet, where there is but one road, one will, one wish, there, I can take them out, examine them, it is too soon to understand.

  My father’s life grows out of my sister’s mouth. She builds a ship in this room, I see it, she sees it, and in the deepest part the roaring answer is fire. “He is there,” she said, “down there. Always there, day after day, night after night, because a ship must move. Listen to the roar of the fire.”

  And I listened, and for the first time in my life I know what lies inside the ship that sails.

  “And there’s no bloody end to it,” my sister said.

  “End?”

  She threw her arms around me, hugged me. “Poor Peter. You’re too young, you don’t understand, but you will, you will.” It made me smile. She was so young herself. It’s all right for mother to say what you shall be, but it costs money. “What shall I do, Maureen? Mother begged me, I couldn’t refuse, I hated to, it was something that she wanted. I was glad, mother’s so sad, so terribly sad. Perhaps we should never have come away to this city.” She kissed me. “Don’t worry your little head,” she said.

  It was not the answer, it was not enough. The days pass, the months, a whole year. I study, I work hard, for Mother. For nobody else. “I will die here.” The words toll in my ear.

  “Maureen?” She looks at me with such wide-open eyes that I might be going to ask her the most important question in the world.

  “Well?”

  I seem to be looking at my sister as though for the first time. I am suddenly aware of her age, of her mass of red hair, and her near-to-black eyes, and I look down to the hands that already know about the jute. “Why have we come here?” I asked.

  Her laugh seemed to mock my question. “They say there are two hundred thousand of us here in Gelton. Ask them. They may have the answer, I haven’t.”

  “Do you like your work, Maureen?”

  “I never ask myself silly questions, and I never answer them either. What I like, I eat, and what I don’t like I spit out.”

  “Mother hates the place.”

  “It’s always Mother, isn’t it? What about Father?”

  Yes, what about him. But I haven’t the answer, I see him so little, always away, a stranger in the family.

 
“Did you want to come here?” I said.

  “Did you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then neither do I. You like being at the seminary?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wish to be a priest?”

  “You don’t like my being there?”

  “Desmond doesn’t, nor does Anthony, and I expect father doesn’t either, but he says nothing. Do you know what I really think, Peter?”

  “What?”

  “It’s crazy.”

  The door opened and Mother came in. Immediately Maureen got up and walked out. Mother sat down, she did not look at me, but into the fire. “Your father is a good man, Peter.”

  “I know that, Mother. I know it.”

  “He does his best for us all.”

  “I know that, too.”

  She turned and looked at me. “But he has returned to his ship an angry man.”

  “Why, Mother?”

  “Ask your brothers, your sister,” she said.

  “But if you say it is the right thing, it is the right thing,” I said. She made no reply. I left her by the fire, I went up to my room. I sat there, numbed, I knew then that they were beginning to hate me.

  “Tell me about this woman,” Father Anselm said, and his voice came to me as from the ocean’s distance. I sat up quickly.

  “She was a moneylender,” I said.

  “You were in debt?”

  “We were all in debt.”

  “Heavily?”

  “Up to the hilt. But I never knew, not for a long time. The ground was smooth, the air was calm, I knew nothing. I had been sitting on their backs all the time. My mother hid everything, the secret between us was in the end all her own. I knew it was time to go. I ran away from the seminary, I threw it all away. Even that didn’t help. It was too late.”

  “What had the woman done to deserve the knife?” he asked. And I was back on the road again, tramping the dream way.

  My brother Desmond is a giant, he towers over me. He has met me at the station, a surprise, not asked for, never expected, the one who most dislikes me, for what I am trying to do, for mother’s sake.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said.

  “Yes, Desmond,” I said.

  “Let’s slip in here. It’s quiet, shut off, one cannot talk at home. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Listen,” Desmond said, and I listened. “My life is being planned for me, so is Maureen’s, Anthony has cleared out. Your own is already planned. Father is forgotten. He doesn’t exist. He is merely the bearer to and fro of what he earns. He simply works. I work, Maureen works, and everything is grabbed, sucked up, and then it vanishes. Where? You know. I am not accusing you of anything. I know you are the family favourite. You do what you think is right. I think it’s wrong. I am sick and tired of having God Almighty pushed down my throat. And I told her so. She is not only angry, she’s terribly distressed about it. We must all be good, obey her orders, we must do what is right. I don’t believe in what she believes in.”

  “You mean the Church?”

  “My Church is Gelton and it is full of wretches riding on each other’s back.”

  “I am riding on your back.”

  “If you like it that way,” he said.

  “What shall I do?”

  “Give it up.”

  “Give it up? My God!” I said, “that’ll be a terrible blow to Mother. I know it will. I feel sorry for Mother, she never wished to come to this country, never.”

  “Lots have.”

  “I can’t do it, Desmond. It’s the one thing that makes her happy. I’d do anything to break down this sadness she lives with, she’s so lonely, if only you understood.”

  “I do.”

  “God Almighty. What is right and what is wrong?”

  “Ask her,” he said.

  And I dared not ask her. I could only think of the wound, I forgot my brothers, my sister, I even forgot my father.

  “We will help no more. And I intend to get away out of it, to find my own life. We will give no more.”

  I was mystified, stunned. “Give what?”

  “Money,” he said, “money,” hissing it in my ear.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder. “And I’ll tell you something else. Another plan. You know that chap Kilkey who comes around here Sundays with the priest, collecting, short thick-set chap around about forty. A rigger with Reynolds?”

  “I think I do,” I said.

  “Mother is planning for him to marry Maureen.”

  “Maureen. Marry, she’s hardly sixteen yet.”

  “For the good of her soul perhaps,” Desmond said.

  “Does she want to marry him?”

  “Ask her,” he said. “I expect she’ll be glad to get away, whether she loves him or not.”

  “I never realized, I——”

  “It’s time you did.”

  “Maureen,” I thought, “she’s only a girl, so young.” Planned. By Mother. I couldn’t believe it. But I could the other. I was being sacrificed for an idea. More words to lock up, to carry inside me, back across the sea, to the seminary, to the small room, back to the studies, back on the only road. And every step back I told myself that it was finished, and it was. I made up my mind. I cannot work. I will run away, this very night, I plan to do it, I pack some things. The time comes and I cannot move.

  A letter has come, from home, from Mother. The wound is in it, it’s everywhere, her sadness, her loneliness. It is what I do that makes her happy, it makes up for all. “I never wanted Gelton, Peter, never, but your father would have his way. It is not my choice, it is not my land, there is much that disgusts me. I never wished anything more in my life than to bring up a family of good men. I do not understand the people here, I never will. Your father says that we will all go back home one fine day. Each trip he comes home it is the same thing. I wait.”

  The wound bleeds. “Desmond is very angry with me. He is against you, Peter, he always was. He has not our nature. He despises his religion. Your father seems indifferent and doesn’t care. Even Maureen is turning against me, becoming hard, selfish. At first they were agreeable, and what I asked from each was never much, but now they begrudge it. Desmond says he will leave the house if the nonsense goes on. That is the name he gives it. It has grieved me much. You are the only one I really love, Peter, and I know you will grow up into a good man. I rely on you.”

  The anchor is down, the chain around my neck. I am fourteen, and in my tiny study God is mountain size and looks down on me. “I so look forward to seeing you again, my dear. God bless you. Your most loving mother.”

  The resolve is gone, the plan is in shreds. I stay. I sit on others’ backs.

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” Brother Anselm said, “for I feel sure you will feel relieved when you have emptied yourself of it.”

  “Yes, Brother Anselm, I will feel more contented in my mind,” I said.

  “The gaol will never hurt so much as the knife,” he said, “and you’ll carry it with you for the remainder of your life. The mark of man is his conscience, and something dies in us if we refuse to acknowledge it. It is good to confess. We live on one another. You were very young, and perhaps too young to know that goodness is sometimes like the blind man who rejoices only in his sightless eyes. I feel like that about your mother. Poor woman. How simple the wish. To go back to your roots, to dream of it all your life, to want nothing but that. It wasn’t much, was it?”

  And I said immediately, “No, Brother. Indeed, it was not.”

  “But I gather she got what she wanted in the end. She went back with your father?”

  “She did indeed.”

  “I am glad of that,” he said. And I shut my eyes, against the sight of the mound, the bare tree. I felt tears start up in me, and when I opened them again Brother Anselm had turned away, as though he knew, understood, and I respected him for the silence that he kept. Everywhere I was open, raw. It is how I am.

/>   “Your father gave up the sea?”

  “In the end, yes.”

  “Your sister married, and your eldest brother left home?”

  “Yes.” He is telling me my own story.

  “You had run away from the seminary. What made you do that? Were you ashamed?”

  “Of myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I knew. I understood,” I said. I opened a door in my mind, and it was another day.

  Day of the fog, of the knock, of the woman, of the house shouting, “Pay. Pay.” A cold day, forbidding, and everything drowned, streets and roads, ships and river, men, houses and rooms, everything swallowed up in the deepest fog. My mother is out. She often is, nobody knows where, the journeys are secret. My father is home, the anchor is down, he will sail no more. I am glad for her, a city is less lonely. I have run away from the seminary, and it’s the end. I have done with it, I will have none of it. I told her, told her to her face. Even now my cheek burns from the struck blow, but it hurt her more than it hurt me.

  “Why have you done this to me?”

  “Because I know,” I said.

  “Know what?”

  “Everything.”

  She stands there, mute, white with anger, with bitterness. I think of her as a force, as a pressure all over the house.

  “I know everything.” And then the blow. After that she got her coat and hat and left the room without another word. A door banged. I thought I was alone in the house, and I felt it was the end, really the end. I thought of building up, of striving towards something new, I ached for a beginning. I walked into another room. It was empty, dark, the light was beginning to go. I stood by the window, I thought of my mother, gone off, God knows where, towering in her rage, defeat, I imagined her walking straight to the church, the oasis, her love, her strength, the faith that was as warm as blood. I could see her there, the very savagery of her nature broken as she knelt, to ask, to understand. The light went at last, I stood in the dark. A silent house. I wondered when she would return. I went upstairs to my room, sat there a while, came down again. I walked into the sitting-room, as dark, as silent, and yet I heard breathing. I stood quite still. Then I struck a match.

  “Father! What on earth’s wrong? Are you ill?” I drew the curtains, filled the room with light. My father was limp, speechless in a chair, a low chair, and his arms hung heavy at his sides, and he was hunched. The fingers of his hands seemed on the point of trailing the carpet at which he stared. My heart missed a beat, I knelt down. “How long have you been here?”