The Secret Journey

by James Hanley

  ‘Come on, hurry up there,’ the conductor said. ‘This bloody car goes to Banfield Place, and then to the South Seas.’ He pulled Peter on to the tram. ‘Hey there! You’ve dropped your knife.’

  ‘Oh yes! Knife, thanks. Thanks.’ He pushed it into his pocket and slumped down into the seat. The car roared on its way. The strong draught came in blowing upon Peter’s face. It blew his hair over his eyes.

  CHAPTER XX

  The tram bumped and rattled its way up the Mile Hill. Peter Fury half lay upon the seat nearest the platform. The conductor was whistling the tune of a popular song. Head leaning against the glass, mouth open and panting as though from some terrific exertion, Peter stared up at the deck head, an almost bovine expression upon his face. His coat front was covered with slime. Occasionally the ear-splitting whistle of the tram conductor ceased, and he looked in at the youth on the seat. The car stopped and two elderly men got out. It moved off again, the conductor this time setting the tune to the broken rhythm of the tram. Few people were about. The long line of shops was in darkness, and as the car at last reached the hill-top the atmosphere seemed more stuffy and heavy, the streets with their regiments of mean-looking houses seemed choked by this sea of brick and slate. Here and there lights showed that some occupants of the houses had not yet retired to bed. The tram now ran more smoothly, and this sudden change from the storm and stress of the long climb affected the young man on the seat. He sat up, one hand to his head, and looking towards the conductor asked, ‘Banfield Road?’

  ‘No.’

  Silence again. Apart from the driver and conductor, Peter was the sole passenger on the lower deck. All the way from town he had received the strong clean draught of air in his face, air that had in it something of the salt tang of the sea—until the tram began to near more densely populated areas, where the air was stagnant.

  ‘Instone Road.’ With a dull shriek the tram came to a halt. Peter sat up and yawned, then staggered from the car. He was still a little unsteady on his feet. His head was clearing, though he still held one hand to it—a throbbing, leaden pain seemed to be circling round it. The sick feeling had gone. Lying on the seat, the contents of both coat pockets had tumbled out, but he did not notice them. The conductor, seeing them, picked them up. There was a canvas sheath with a knife in it; a holy picture doubled up and bound with string that, like the card itself, was black and dirty with some sort of grease; a photograph of a woman; a half-empty packet of Tabs cigarettes; and a shilling. The conductor flung them out to the young man. They landed in the gutter. The car went on past Instone Road.

  Peter picked up the articles and put them back in his pocket. Then he went off towards Banfield Road. At one point it was so dark he struck a match to see the name of the street in which he stood. A row of dingy brick houses imprisoned in darkness. It was so still here he could hear the sound of his own footsteps. He felt nothing, thought nothing. The power had flooded elsewhere. He saw. He saw most vividly, his vision was searing, penetrative. He could see through the brick walls all the people living behind them. He walked on, hands thrust into his pockets. Sometimes the unconscious action of one’s soul determines the body’s movement. Peter walked neither slowly nor quickly, but he walked with a sort of quiet determination, and it seemed that all objects within the orbit of his vision succumbed to the penetrating glance. Houses were square and oblong, high and low, squat and dirty, huge and ominous. Walls were brick, brick festered all space, bestowing upon it something paralysing and imperishable. The sea of brick deluged space, poisoned air, filled the still night with the grotesque shadows of itself. Lights appeared and then went out. A footstep rang out upon the hard pavement, a dog barked, a scuffling of cats. He walked on. Always the rushing forth to meet him of shadows, the night deluged with shadows, dark forms looming up from behind the dense curtain of darkness.

  Ahead stood a lamp. He began to run towards this, as though some sudden desire urged him to seek shelter in the pale yellowish glow that carpeted a patch of the ground below. He stood in the circle of light and looked around him. All around a black void, and silhouetted against the sky buildings, chimneys, roofs, shapes, and gestures of shapes. This great phalanx of streets and houses seemed to crowd down upon him. He suddenly ran off into the darkness again. Then he stopped. There was Banfield Road! He knew that road as he knew his own hand. And there was the pickle factory, its tall chimneys looking like great pointing fingers towards the sky. Here the air was rank with the smell of onions and sauces and spices whose scents were strange to him. The great factory stood solid, a dull glitter here and there marked its windows. There was a light in the house, the familiar red light he had seen before, but he did not look at this. Instead, with his hands behind his back, he stood looking up at the tall chimneys. Then he crossed the road and stood in front of Banfield House. The walls were no longer brick. Instead they had a sort of glacier-like transparency about them, through which he could see like some ogreish phantom the figure of Daniel Corkran standing in its hall, with that strange enigmatic smile, that partly curled lip, the outrageous waxed moustaches, the carefully parted hair. He could see him moving up and down the hall like some human snake, silent, sly. Banfield House that snuggled against the huge factory, and behind it that stretch of waste ground with its ash and rubble heaps.

  He opened the gate and went up the gravel path. And all the memories of the place suddenly crowded in upon his mind. He looked behind him. He imagined he had heard a sound. The light was on. Then somebody was in the house. There was a sound as of a bunch of keys being rattled. He leaped to the path again, hid behind a bush. Silence again. Then he muttered an exclamation. The door was not shut. It was slightly ajar. What could it mean at that hour? Once more he looked about him. Then he went inside—stood trembling, holding his breath. He pushed back the door as he had found it. Then he switched out the red light. He tiptoed towards the stairs and stood for a moment entirely hidden by the curtains. He was only just in time, for the front door suddenly opened, and Daniel Corkran, just returned from his constitutional—a five minutes’ pacing of the road past the pickle factory—had returned. Peter heard him say under his breath, ‘I’ll swear I left that light on! Perhaps it’s short-circuited.’ The switch clicked. Peter put both hands to his mouth and stood motionless. Mr. Corkran closed the door, put the catch back and went down the hall to the kitchen. A door closed.

  Peter peered through the curtains. In which room was she? He went upstairs, stood for a moment on the landing, and then descended again. The top part of the house seemed to be in darkness. Then he saw a tiny ribbon of light appear from under the door of one of the rooms at the kitchen end of the hall. He knelt down and silently crept along and looked through the keyhole. She was there! He saw her quite clearly. She was seated at the table, her back to him. On the table lay a small heap of money—the familiar black ledger and some blue official-looking documents. She was looking at an illustrated magazine.

  He stood up without a sound. Then slowly he began to turn the handle. The door moved, creaked. The blood ran to his head, he clasped his hands about his mouth. He was trembling like a leaf. The woman had turned round and looked towards the door. Peter put his eye to the keyhole. As he looked at the woman’s face he realized suddenly that she had heard the creaking sound. She was no longer reading, but with downcast eyes watching the door. Peter went suddenly cold, and though his whole body remained rigid, his right hand, as though endowed with some individual life of its own, began to turn the handle again. Was she really looking at the door, or was she reading still? Perhaps she was falling asleep. This time he pushed the door with a firmer hand. The woman moved. He could see her face in profile now. Then he pushed wide the door and slipped into the room. He closed it, ran across the room and stood in front of her. ‘Oh!—You——’ she exclaimed, but he heard no word. He was only mindful of the hideousness of her features in that sudden moment of confrontation. He whipped the knife from his pocket and drove it deep into her neck. She gave a
low scream and fell back in the chair. A fountain of bright blood spurted forth upon him—his hands were covered, his coat splashed, but he saw nothing beyond that upturned face. With a sudden frenzy, as though born of the immobility of Anna Ragner, he pressed in the knife, the blood curdled about the hilt. Her half-open mouth seemed to make her more hideous. The expression upon her face seemed one of contempt, of mockery. He lifted the ringed fingers of her right hand, bunched them together and forced them brutally into the dead woman’s mouth. The features seemed to distend, the mouth beneath the glaring eyes seemed to be devouring the jewelled hand.

  It was at this moment that Mr. Corkran burst into the room. He had heard the low scream. ‘Bloody Christ!’ he shouted, and rushed towards Peter. Peter Fury dodged him and dashed out of the room. As he rushed down the hall he seemed to feel the presence of that silent-footed man who had so often walked it, and he only remembered one thing. He had a vivid impression of the dead woman with her hand in her mouth. The door banged. He heard a shout—there was a scuffling of feet. He ran down the drive. The gate was stuck. He leaped over it and made off in the darkness.

  Daniel Corkran was already running down the drive. He stood for a moment bewildered, his body shaking, his hands to his head. He shouted, ‘Stop that man! Stop him!’ Then he ran back, shut the door, and went out through the gate.

  Peter Fury was still running, but Corkran, fleet of foot, was on his heels again. Darkness walled them in. There was nothing to be seen on that long black road but their flying figures. Suddenly Peter Fury stopped, but only for the flash of a second, as though measuring his pursuer’s distance, then he dashed into a side-street. He wanted to stop again, if only for a moment. He felt his heart would burst. But he dare not. Daniel Corkran continued to shout. He stood a moment at the corner of the street. A cul-de-sac. He had him. Doors were flung open—people seemed to pour into the dark street as Corkran still shouted, but Peter had gone. He had climbed a wall, and even as the excitement grew he was already slithering down an embankment. There was the line. If he followed the line he was safe. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s done! It’s done!’ His forehead was thick with sweat. The house had vanished, the knife had disappeared—vision was clouded only by that hideous mouth that seemed to be in the act of devouring its own hand.

  Shouts above his head. An avalanche of black figures piling over the wall. He ran on. Something in his blood, some wild delirium answered to this oncoming pack. A goods’ train roared in from the tunnel. Its long black shape was silhouetted against the skyline. ‘I’ve murdered her. God! I’ve done it. Oh, Christ! That knife! That knife! Each time I lost it and I got it back. Oh, God!’ He fell, gasping, incoherent sentences falling from his lips. He got up, wiped his face and ran on. There was a crash and clatter. They were gaining on him. A man-hole! A man-hole. Where was there a man-hole? A whistle blew. ‘Police,’ flashed through his brain. ‘Police! Jesus!’ Suddenly he flashed across the points behind the signal box, ran up the bank, caught the boarding and leaped up. A face met his own. They were trying to pen him in. They had surrounded him: a face that seemed only teeth. Teeth. Voices in his ears. He fell flat; rolled down the bank again. Quickly he undid his boots, flung them into a hole, and gathering himself as though for some supreme effort, ran on. He kept to the four-foot, facing the oncoming traffic. Each stride landed him on the sleepers. He seemed to fly, to be drawn farther and farther behind the wall of the protecting darkness. Which way out? Suppose he was confronted suddenly? He began to limp. His foot had at last plunged on to the ballast of small stones. Ahead darkness. Saving darkness. Again he fell, seemed to catapult over a hidden pile of fish-plates, and was on again. ‘A light,’ he cried. ‘There’s a light.’ There was no light. Nothing but the impenetrable blackness that held his secret. He stopped, fell flat on his face. He could see nothing. He listened. Yes, people were behind. He could hear them now. And as he rose he flashed his eyes towards the direction of the sound. The air seemed to hum; teeth, rows of teeth, seemed to flash by. Then he was on again. A hole! A hole! If he could find a hole. The voices were drawing nearer, they swelled into shouts. Terror seized him. He stood shaking, eyes to the ground—listening. Yes, they were almost on top of him. He turned, leaped across the rails, and scrambled up the opposite banking. Twice he slipped, and climbed again. Fortified by sheer desperation, by the very sounds in his ears, he made a supreme effort and reached the top of the wall. He dropped twelve feet into an entry, and lay there gasping, covered with filth, bloody, petrified. He rolled over into the filth, he plunged his hands into it, to rub off the blood. He pressed his face against the cold stones and wept.

  He was caught. He was hemmed in. It was dark no longer. The blackness vanished. Some monstrous sun had appeared and bathed the street into which he now ran in a blinding white light. Bodies moved forward, backward, faces rushed towards him, vanished, flashed towards him again. He was trapped. He was alone in the middle of the street. And all around, people! He screamed, ‘Go away! Go away!’ and tried to run. But his feet were leaden. He put his hand to his nose, began spitting; he shouted, ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘God! I was dreaming or something,’ he said, and pulled himself up from the filth in which he had lain. Had he been asleep? How long had he lain there? Sounds became thunderous in his ears and he heard a voice shout, ‘He cleared this wall. I saw him!’ He ran down the entry. Darkness again, darkness that seemed to throb to the movements of figures. He glanced round. A great crowd were behind him. They were running. He could feel their breath upon him—the air was choked with their breathings. Instone Road. If he could reach the bottom he might elude them. He might make the railway again and so along to the Loco Shed.

  Suddenly the air was alive with cries. ‘There he is! Catch him! Stop that man! He’s murdered a woman.’ The crowd came on. Peter vanished again into a side-street. ‘Oh, God!’ he said. ‘Oh, God! Oh, Mother! Anthony!’ He could see them. They were standing at the door in Hatfields. Their arms were held out to him. Their arms seemed to stretch far out—to touch him. Yes, he could actually feel them. A man barred his path. He knocked him down and ran on. Then he rushed through an open doorway. A family were sitting at supper. They saw a flying form and then it seemed to melt into the very air. He had gone right through the house. Another wall. He began climbing again. ‘Mother!’ he shouted. ‘Mother!’ He dropped down on to soil. He was on a canal bank. Lights loomed up. He flung himself down, his breast seemed on the point of bursting. ‘Oh, Christ! Christ!’ and he hammered the earth with his fist. There was a roar behind him. People were jumping over the walls. He dived into the water, swam under the surface. He reached the opposite bank, climbed another wall and found himself in a long dark street. He ran on. Nothing save those outstretching arms. They drew him on.

  St. Sebastian Place. The chapel. Price Street. Hatfields. Doors opened, the streets became flooded with light. Life poured out into them, fragments became massed. The mass moved on, a living flood. It shouted, laughed, cursed. The cries of children merged in this solid phalanx. Hat-fields seemed to tremble before the oncoming waves of people. The arms beckoned, ‘Come! Come!’ The bricks became great mirrors through which he could glimpse the sea of faces, thrust forward, upturned, meshed together as one face—a hideous face with a bejewelled hand in its mouth. He began to laugh. Hands reached out, he eluded them and dived into the entry. The pallid light from a lamp fastened to the wall shone down on him. Again that deluge of movements behind him, a forest of hands, faces—teeth. There was the door. ‘Jesus!’ he shouted. Somebody pulled at his coat. He gripped the top of the wall. Then he fell into the yard. The light from the kitchen flooded it. The back door was safe. He reached the kitchen door. ‘Open it! Open it!’ He kicked, pummelled with his fist. People were piling into the yard. ‘Open it for Christ’s sake!’ he shouted. Suddenly it opened and he fell in. The door closed. The bolt shot back. ‘God!’ he said. ‘God!’

  He stood in the kitchen. There was Anthony sitting by the windo
w, and there his mother. She was bent over the fire stirring something in the pan. She swung round and looked at him. ‘What is this?’ she said quietly, as though this dramatic entrance was the most natural thing in the world. The yard was black with people. The house seemed to shake under their cries, their loud, insistent hammerings upon the door.

  Peter caught his mother by her arms—he began to laugh—his eyes seemed to dance in his head. Suddenly he began shaking her. ‘Mother! Mother! Don’t you understand, Mother?’ Then she saw his bloody hands, his blood-bespattered coat, his face splashed, yeasty with sweat.