The Secret Journey

by James Hanley

  ‘Well, they’re there, anyhow,’ she said. ‘Fanny, I want you to enjoy yourself this evening. Heaven knows when I shall see you again. And if I ever do, let’s hope things are better, and do try, won’t you—do try to shake off that awful habit you’ve got into lately of letting everything go. You mustn’t do it, my dear woman. Think how spirited, how courageous you were at one time, and now when you have a chance of getting a little quiet and comfort, you don’t even want to put out a hand to grasp it. Cheer up, Fanny. Let’s go in and have a nice hot gin—or would you like a glass of hot ale or stout?’

  They crossed the road and went into ‘The Beefsteak,’ where Miss Mangan wisely decided to have a hot ale herself. There was a good ten minutes to spare, and it seemed to her that it might be put to good account. She might not get an opportunity like this again. Fanny was seemingly in the best of spirits. After all, there would be no harm in broaching a question or two on a convivial occasion such as this. Brigid waited until her sister had sipped from her glass, and raising her own she said, ‘Fanny! I’ve often wondered what Father’s pension was. It wasn’t very substantial, I don’t suppose.’ Then she drank.

  ‘A few shillings a week,’ replied Mrs. Fury. ‘I hope you don’t think Father was a millionaire.’

  ‘What do you take me for, woman? I know well enough he wasn’t a millionaire, but at the same time, Fanny, he was no pauper. Dear no. Father was certainly depending on nobody’s charity.’ She affected a slight perturbation and looked far over her sister’s head. ‘Really, woman, you must sometimes doubt my intelligence. What do you think I’m driving at?’ She rang the bell on the table, but this was purely by accident. Brigid Mangan said, ‘Nothing, thanks,’ to the barman, and took up her glass again.

  ‘What are you driving at, Brigid? I hope you don’t think that I’ve gained anything from looking after Father. Dad has his small pension and no more. The man is quite penniless. It runs in the family,’ she said.

  ‘I thought,’ began Brigid—but Mrs. Fury rattled her glass on the table.

  ‘Don’t think anything,’ said Mrs. Fury. ‘There’s nothing for you to think about now, excepting to get the old man safely across the water. Father has no money, if that’s what you think,’ and Brigid Mangan seemed to shrink before her sister’s eyes.

  ‘Fanny! You are a one, but then I understand you so well, don’t I?’ She smiled now. ‘Don’t spoil other people’s genuine good feelings just because life has soured you now.’

  ‘It’s the way you put things, Brigid. You’re so clumsy, whereas I am not. One is never clumsy in Hatfields. Besides, there’s never time for thinking.’

  ‘Oh, this is just silly,’ protested Brigid. ‘This argument over a hot drink—and aren’t we going to the Variety? All I asked was how much Father got a week. I never asked you to jump down my throat. Be cool, Fanny! One would imagine I was accusing you of poisoning him. Come along. It’s time to go.’

  Brigid Mangan was a lady who rarely swore, but she swore now, not loudly, but very secretly in her own self. She had put her foot in it. ‘Am I clumsy?’ she asked herself. ‘I only wanted to find out in some way what became of Dad’s black box, and there’s the education of that boy. That must have cost money. The Catholic Church didn’t pay for that, for the Catholic Church is poor itself and wants all the money it can get. Oh, blast!’

  Having tickets, the two women did not have to wait in the queue, but went straight into the Lyric, and took their seats in the pit, about six rows from the stage. The air smelt strongly of oranges, beer, and tobacco. The auditorium hummed with conversations, loud and low; laughs broke out; somebody kept shouting, ‘Give him one up the bloody backside and be done with it,’ and in the midst of this commotion Brigid Mangan and her sister sat in complete silence. They both looked the one way, it is true, for the safety curtain had rolled up and the lights had been extinguished. The bioscope had come into action. The marionette-like actions of the figures were greeted with bursts of laughter, in which Mrs. Fury herself joined. Miss Mangan, whom Nature had surely endowed to laugh at such simple and innocent pleasure, sat firm as a rock. Once or twice Mrs. Fury said, ‘That was good, wasn’t it?’ and Miss Mangan’s reply sounded rather like a very dignified ‘Ahem!’ But at last the ice broke. The lights were up again—the screen had vanished and the impatient audience began joining in the overture, accompanying it with much shuffling of feet and clapping of hands. When the brightly uniformed attendant came out to put the number of the turn in the slot, the audience cheered wildly.

  A young lady came out and sang. Brigid Mangan gave one look at the skirt and exclaimed under her breath, ‘How disgraceful, Fanny! These English fashions are so low. Just look at that woman. What man could mistake that bump behind for anything else but what it is? I think it’s atrocious the way the silly girls bottle themselves up—those kind of skirts, why, one can hardly walk in one.’ The young lady sang her two songs with a most vibrating effect not only upon her larynx, but upon those of the audience to whom she cried, ‘Come along, boys, all together.’ And the whole audience sang with great fervour the last verse of ‘Oh, Willie, I have missed you.’ The audience deafened the theatre. Brigid Mangan kept glancing at her sister. Fanny Fury seemed to have lost that harassed expression.

  ‘Are you enjoying it, Fanny?’ she asked, and sat closer to her sister. ‘This is just the kind of thing you want, Fanny! You must go out more often, cheer yourself up. It isn’t good to be always nursing one’s worries. I never worry, and look at me.’

  ‘Oh! it’s not always the worry, woman,’ said Mrs. Fury. ‘Sometimes it’s my feet. I have awful trouble with them. The last time I visited this place, I had to go home before it had gone half-way.’

  ‘And are they all right now?’

  ‘Yes. They’re much better. Ah! Just you wait until everything has quietened down. When Dad and you have gone, and when my last two are off, just like the rest, I’ll have such a good time. No more worries, no more planning, everything as clear and clean as a pikestaff. I’ll be really well off. I’m going to have a grand time one of these days, Brigid, and don’t you forget it. You’re having yours now, but everybody gets a turn—soon it’ll be mine.’

  ‘Ssh! not so loud, Fanny, people are looking at us,’ said Brigid. ‘And what about Denny?’

  ‘Let them look! If they couldn’t go on with their looking, what in heaven’s name would there be left for them to do? Denny! Oh! he’ll turn up like the proverbial bad penny. His father had five sons, and four of them were prodigals. Denny’s a nice man—but being nice isn’t everything. One wants something more than being nice to a person, Brigid. He can’t say a thing against me, excepting that I had my head in the sky and not in the gutter like his own, maybe, and that I tried to do too much. Ah! The man used to make me sick. All right for him to talk. Men hate responsibilities. They go out and work and bring the money in, but there it ends. I reared the children, not Denny, and he knows it. But what can you expect, my good woman, what can you, from a man like that who was born for nothing else but green water?’

  ‘But don’t you love him, Fanny?’ asked Miss Mangan. She sat back in her seat to allow two latecomers to crush past. ‘Denny’s all you have now.’

  ‘Of course I love the old fool,’ said Fanny, who began to rock with laughter at the sudden appearance of a red-nosed comedian on the stage. ‘Let’s not talk now,’ she said, ‘for I like these funny men.’

  ‘I wonder if I oughtn’t to ask her about Dad’s box,’ thought Miss Mangan. There seemed no harm in it. And, Fanny was certainly in good humour. ‘Why am I getting so nervy over this business of Father? Brigid Mangan, you’re being ridiculous. Maybe, for all you know, this woman is laughing at you.’

  No! She couldn’t do it. Fanny would take offence at once. It would spoil their evening. Yet he had a box, and there must have been some papers in it. ‘If Mr. O’Toole is right, then Father had some money all along, as I very well knew—and if he took it out of the post-office savings—wher
e is it now? He didn’t have any in that box, for I would have seen it. I wonder if Dad transferred it here. Oh! I think I ought to ask a question or two.’ She sat very thoughtful, following the contortions of the comedian with her eyes, but not in the least interested in what she called ‘his efforts to be funny.’

  ‘Are there any things to go with Father, Fanny?’ she asked. ‘Clothes or personal treasures. I believe he used to have a black japanned box. At least, I remember his taking it with him. And there’s his gold hunter. Has he still the watch?’

  Mrs. Fury, her eye still on the stage, replied,’ Box! Oh! we broke that up years ago for firewood. Yes, he still has his watch. I hope you don’t think I took any of his things—nor my children.’

  ‘How sensitive you are! I wasn’t meaning anything like that. But if there are things to go with him, I suppose they’ll have to be packed, won’t they? Did he have nothing in the box at all?’

  ‘Why do you keep talking about this box, Brigid? Yes—I believe there were some papers in it. But there aren’t any now. Perhaps he burnt them. Perhaps we lit the fire with them. Why should we want to delve into Father’s private possessions?’ She moved about uneasily in her seat.

  ‘There you go again, Fanny! Isn’t it only right I should ask? I mean nothing by it. Perhaps he did burn the papers.’

  ‘And if he did, what’s that got to do with us sitting here? For heaven’s sake damp your curiosity until we get home. If you mention that box again, Brigid, I’ll get up and walk home. You ask me to come to the Lyric with you. You ask me to enjoy myself, and no sooner am I in my seat than you start off about his box. Heavens, woman, I half believe you think he had a fortune in it. Let me tell you something, Brigid, before your imagination runs away with you. Father has no money. The man is penniless, and he was penniless when he came here. If, as you think, he had any money, then he must have swallowed it. Brigid, I will go. I’m not going to sit here listening to that. Tell me’—she looked straight in Brigid Mangan’s face—‘tell me, why have you come over for Father at all? That’s what I’d like to know. Very much. I’ve kept him for years, clothed and fed him, put up with his helplessness—I’ve done everything, and now that curious head of yours is imagining all kinds of things. I won’t have it, Brigid! God! I won’t. I have enough to think about without that. Really, you’ve spoiled the evening.’

  Mrs. Fury at once got up and began pushing her way along the row of benches. And in her wake followed grumbles, murmurs, swearings below the breath. But at last she was clear of the benches and safely isolated in the passage-way. Everybody turned their heads to look, for it seemed that the conversation between the two sisters had arrested attention, so that the comedian upon the stage was left temporarily isolated. Aunt Brigid, quite unconscious of people’s stares, sat motionless in her seat. She burned with rage. She had been quite unable to control herself. She had spoiled the evening. Worse, she was now confronted with the awful possibility of her father’s destitute condition. Her optimism had received a nasty jolt.

  ‘And all I did was to enquire about his black box. Oh! I am a fool. And I thought I could control myself.’

  She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She had done the worst possible thing.

  ‘I’ve roused her suspicions now.’

  The future looked black—the horizon, once clear, was now pitted with dark shadows. It wasn’t the box, the papers, or the money. It wasn’t her sister who spoiled the evening. It was—and how she hated the very thought of it—it was the possibility that Mrs. Fury might suddenly say, ‘No, you can’t take him back. Besides, I’d be a fool, worse, I’d be cruel letting him go.’

  Miss Mangan wanted to get up and go out as quickly, as silently, and as unnoticed as possible. But she hated to move. Something held her fast in the seat. But where was her sister? Miss Mangan looked round. Fanny was nowhere in sight. She must go now. She couldn’t sit here another moment. She must make peace with her sister at all costs. Rows and rows of faces, hundreds of eyes, and somehow not a single one was focussed upon the stage. Rather were they focussed upon Miss Mangan—at least, Brigid thought so, and her own face was almost crimson. These faces, these eyes, glared at her. The comedian had begun another song, ‘Watching the trains come in—watching the trains go out.’ Brigid Mangan, hardly able to breathe from sheer suffocation of shame and misery, rose to her feet. But her passage through that long row of people was difficult at this moment—they thought of nothing but their own comfort, the slightest disturbance of which was bound to have reactions that might tear the last shred of control from the stout lady who had now begun her task.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she kept saying, and ‘Sorry,’ as she paused now and again to allow some occupant of the bench to draw in his or her knees, her face so deep a red that it seemed only the slightest breath of air was required to make it shoot into flame. And to herself she kept saying, ‘Lord! Why did I do it?’

  And oh, how much she longed, longed with her whole soul, to be back in the peace and quiet of that old house in the Mall. She was half-way down the bench now. Then an astonishing thing happened. A dead silence filled the whole theatre. Even the comedian ceased singing about the trains. An attendant stood at the end of the long row, impatiently watching the tortuous progress of the stout lady in brown. This silence was no silence for Miss Mangan—this silence was a thunderous roar in her ears. And she lowered her head still further, her cheeks burning—her thoughts turned towards that ‘miserable woman’ who had gone off and left her like this.

  ‘I do believe she enjoys it. Enjoys my being stared at like this. I could tell when I ran for the tram this evening.’

  She had reached three-quarters of the way down the bench. There was a sudden pause. An old man had begun to cough, and judging from its severity, the changing expressions on the old man’s face, it was an asthmatical one. And this seemed fated to begin just as Miss Mangan, trying to make her bulk as small as possible, reached him. She said, ‘Excuse me,’ her eyes on the floor, her thoughts millions of miles away, this terrific silence filling her ears, seeming like a great weight upon her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she repeated. And then the old man half dragged himself to his feet. It was this endeavour to facilitate Miss Mangan’s passage that brought on the sudden fit of coughing, and this, the full force of it, was concentrated upon her bosom. But she, isolated in her misery and shame, was quite unaware of it, or of the fact that the old man’s right knee had become wedged so tightly against the bulk of her thigh that he was now in as desperate a strait as Miss Mangan herself. He could move neither backwards nor forwards. Nor, indeed, could Miss Mangan. They were locked tight. It may have been the rude disturbing of the old man’s peace, or it may have been a manifestation of his great displeasure with her, but he continued to cough, the full weight of Aunt Brigid’s bosom appearing to lie with pathetic abandon upon the head and shoulders of the victim. If Miss Mangan had a horror of crowds and of their brazen staring, they at least were out to demonstrate their versatility and their antagonism. They began to laugh. Miss Mangan’s misery was now complete. She was penned. She was pinned tight in the circle, she was the subject of laughter, titters, murmurs, and from the gallery itself, shouts and the rudest remarks. Another five yards, and she would be free. Then she might indeed run, or perhaps miraculously fly. But now some people sitting beyond the old man, who still continued to cough with an almost desperate energy, decided they would not move at all. It was a complete debacle, and Miss Mangan, stupefied by now, realized that if only she hadn’t mentioned that japanned box all would have been well. But she had mentioned, and the Devil had paid her for her curiosity. All interest in the comedian had ceased. At the back of the theatre itself approaching voices could be heard. In a theatre like the Lyric, Brigid Mangan was phenomenal.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she whispered desperately, ‘can’t you please move?’ But all in the row merely laughed, and this wilful laughter was punctuated by the coughing of the old man, who managed after a great
effort to speak. Brigid Mangan could feel his breath upon the top part of her chest, upon her neck, and upon her face. She wanted to do two things. She wanted to be sick. The other was quite impossible. Aunt Brigid wanted to disappear. It did not matter where, so long as she did vanish—far from that frightful laughter, that giggling, those under-currents of whispers, and not least this asthmatic and repulsive individual who seemed to be making nothing more or less than a spittoon of the greater part of Miss Mangan’s bosom. She began to push—forward, sideways; she could feel his bony knee in her soft flesh, and it was this feel of the man’s knee rather than their laughter that made Aunt Brigid desire with all her soul to disappear, to disintegrate, to vanish into the earth.

  The lights had gone. The manager was seen coming down the passage-way. He had managed the Lyric long enough to be able to realize that it was not always his bill of fare that kept the audience in such spirits. And to-night they completely ignored his ‘find,’ the comedian ‘who could really make you laugh,’ absolutely ignored him, and one and all, from the gallery to the pit, had begun to enjoy the spectacle of the very stout lady imprisoned in the bench. It was obvious that the lady was not only a stranger, but she seemed, too, to be that kind of lady who is averse to a little good-natured badinage—a lady, to be brief, who could not see any fun in the situation at all.

  The manager stood at the end of the row. When Miss Mangan saw him, all shame, all propriety went to the winds. ‘I can’t get out,’ she cried. ‘I’m stuck in the old bench.’ A lamentable effort, for the whole theatre seemed to re-echo the broad and musical brogue of Southern Ireland.

  So she was Irish! a stranger to the city.

  ‘Pray to St. Peter and he’ll pull you out,’ shouted a man’s voice from the gallery. And somebody in the stalls shouted down, ‘I’d write to the Pope about this—begorrah, I would,’ making a brave attempt at copying the brogue of the unfortunate woman.