by James Hanley
Just a simple hard-working woman. Just short of money, just short of opportunities. That was all. He knew she had gone away to hide. He understood her shame, her pride in her son gone. But he couldn’t help. Couldn’t raise a finger of effort. No. He could do nothing, who would like to do everything. But this thing he would not do. What he called ‘this magnificent effort’ must be returned to Captain Fury the same day. He was surprised to be asked to undertake such a commission. Such transactions he must say were no part of his business, ending: ‘You might with advantage go down to your mother and hand her the lump sum. She would be well worth it.’
That was that! There it lay, the ‘magnificent effort,’ simply ashes in the fire. Damn Mr. Trears! Blast Mr. Trears! Writing him a letter like that. One might suppose he wanted to commission the man to murder or poison. Telling me what I ought to do. Blast these people. Why were they always correcting him, checking him, telling him what they thought he should do? They seemed to like doing it. Even his wife was not above such a thing, in spite of that largeness of mind upon which she prided herself.
To have thanked Desmond for ‘this magnificent effort’ was something Mr. Trears could not do. At least he could not say ‘magnificent.’ That would get too near the bone. To tell an army captain, and to keep on reminding an army captain of his beginnings would be the last thing to venture. Mr. Trears had more sense than that. He hadn’t liked the man when he met him. He could hardly believe he was the son of the woman whose youngest he had defended, and only by a miracle saved from the rope. Mr. Trears forthwith instructed his clerk to write to Captain Fury. He would not sign the letter. Mr. Potts, the clerk, could always deal with minor matters.
This refusal upset Desmond Fury, as Mr. Laurence Trears knew it would. Well, to hell with Trears. He’d find somebody else. Give her the whole sum. H’m, she wouldn’t drink it, of course! No! But worse horror she might even be generous with it. Give it to the Church. That would be too bad.
Alice bringing in tea disturbed him. He went off into another room, hung about there waiting for Sheila to say:
‘Tea, Des.’ He liked that. Liked hearing her call him ‘Des.’
When at length she did call, and he went in, he showed not the slightest sign of the effect which the solicitor’s letter had had upon him. Between Trears and Tinks he’d had a day. Still, he had made up his mind on one thing. He would see his father. And three times during tea he mentioned this—as though he were determined on planting it in Sheila’s head. She might even say once again: ‘Don’t go.’
‘You know, Des darling, we ought to make more friends in London. Don’t you think so?’
‘Expect we ought to,’ he said, then stuffed his mouth with bun loaf. ‘The right kind, of course. The very opposite of these people we know here. God! They make me sick with their little dignities and their superior airs, and their bloody politeness over things—well, you know.…’
‘Even trifles count,’ she said, countering his ebullience, the kind she didn’t like in him. He laughed. It amused him!
‘Not those kind of silly trifles,’ he said.
‘I hope you find your father well,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I feel I would have loved to have known your parents. Do you think that very funny?’
‘No! Not at all! All the same, you can’t now. So that doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘No, of course not!’
It didn’t! So there was the end of that question.
She drank more tea. ‘D’you think they might have liked me, Des?’ she asked. ‘Really, honestly?’
He smiled down at her. How indefatigable she was! Perhaps it was the tea. ‘Oh, I don’t know! You met one and that was enough for me.’
‘Desmond!’
‘Of course! Yes, I understand! But you began these silly bloody arguments yourself. I never mentioned them, did I? Did I?’ His voice rose.
‘Oh, all right! All right,’ she said, ‘we won’t discuss them. They might be some rare and precious metal, so holy a substance, too holy to be discussed. Your extreme sensitiveness does you no credit—it reveals the worst side of your character. You keep asking me if I love you! Sometimes I find it hard.’
His mind registered a lightning thought. ‘This is dangerous ground.’ Yes it was. One of these days Peter would come back into this and then—he didn’t want to think about it. Why was she so nasty to-day? Had something happened?
And as he climbed the stairs his eyes were full of her body’s shape. Perhaps that was all he did like! Her body’s shape! She was beautiful. He had no sooner got into his room than he began to change. And whilst he shaved and admired his face in the glass, she was behind him.
When she smiled he arched his brows. He was for the moment indifferent. He was a little fed up with to-day. And he cried to himself: ‘Days. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Get me out of this bloody stink-hole!’ Carried away by the thought he uttered the word aloud: ‘Stink-hole,’ forgetting for the moment that she was standing behind him and smiling, and apparently enjoying the knowledge of this irritating substance that would persist in getting under his skin.
‘Des, I shall be here when you come home.’
‘Yes, all right, Sheila!’ He said this with disconcerting absent-mindedness.
‘I’ll be waiting for you.’
‘I know, darling.’ He went on shaving. Suddenly he turned and looked at her. ‘You are very lovely,’ he said. ‘You understand I am jealous; must be. Will be.’
He ran a hand across his throat. ‘Must be. Will be.’ Laughing, he said he used to do that sort of thing when he was a boy.
‘Did you, darling! How wonderful! I’ll be here waiting for you,’ she repeated.
He finished shaving. She sat on the bed watching him complete his dressing. She always enjoyed this. She was fascinated by his height, his breadth, his arms, his muscles, his legs, his big head. These were times when like some virgin youth her husband blushed. Then a wave of feeling overcame her and she would bury his head on her breast.
‘All this to see dad?’
‘All this to see dad,’ he said.
‘I hope everything is all right. I’m so sorry to hear about your mother.’
His whole attitude changed. He said quite surlily, ‘Are you?’ but he was only thinking of Mr. Trears. Later this gentleman vanished in a cloud of sheer rapture, the rapture that swept him when, as he was leaving the room, he kissed his wife, saying: ‘Bye-bye, Sheila—won’t be long,’ and then her dress had fallen apart.
‘I was just going to bath,’ she said.
Was she? He caught her hands, stood away and looked at her. ‘God!’ he said. ‘You’re great! I do love you.’
Then he was gone, gone on this rapturous wave that floated him down the stairs and along the whole of the Manor Park Road. He wanted to shout: ‘Happy! Happy!’
Who wouldn’t be! It was great being alive. Going away. Coming home to her! He carried the aura of her with him wherever he went. He was happy. She was wonderful. He glowed with this happiness. He did not think of another, only a youth, who had glowed of the same happiness, and who had dreamed of going home to her. No! He rotted somewhere in another world altogether. One didn’t think of that. That was another matter altogether. Life here was good. And he was still climbing. Going on and on and up and up. And she was behind him, beside him, in front of him. She was all about him, fluttering, singing, a sort of lovely bird. Who couldn’t be happy? At the end of the road he caught a taxi and asked to be driven to town.
He knew he was on his way to see his father! But so far it hadn’t occurred to him to find out where he was living. Still, he could find out. Patience. When he paid the taxi he went and rang up the hospital. After much stammering and shouting over the wire—the people at the other end imagined some sort of Colossus was speaking to them—they managed to grasp two facts. He was the son of a Mrs. Fury, patient at the hospital, and he wanted her last known address. But it wasn’t customary to supply addresses at random over the’phone. More shoutin
g. At length he got the address.
Seventeen Hey’s Alley. Hey’s Alley—where the devil was that? He hailed another taxi. Directed the man to drive direct to No.17 Hey’s Alley. Then he got in, sat down, banged the door. The clock began to tick. A thin purplish face, with a drooping black moustache, was turned towards him. The driver was speaking: ‘Where’s that, sir?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Afraid I don’t, sir! Never even heard of the blinking place.’
‘Oh!’ Where the devil was it? Must be some queer hole or other. ‘You ought to bloody well know,’ he barked at the driver, who spat through his window into the street.
‘Well, I don’t bloody well know. However, I’ll find out.’
The car started. Yes. He would find it. The bloody old fool would drive him all the way round Gelton he supposed. He sat back in the seat. It was quite dark. The cab turned corners—pulled up, started again. The brakes screeched, the wheel was turned frantically. It careered on through pools of light, then darkness. It stopped again. The driver questioned a man. What was said Captain Fury could not hear. Damn this business! The bloody setbacks he’d had to-day. And her teasing hadn’t improved his opinion of the world. However, to-morrow might be different. The cab rattled on. It seemed that at last the man was bent on taking Captain Fury to his destination.
The arrival caused a commotion. It was a rare occasion when a taxicab arrived in Hey’s Alley. Desmond stared at the crowd of children who quickly surrounded it, when it pulled up at No. 17.
‘Ooh! Ah! It’s a gentleman. It’s a soldier. Ooh!’ and the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ eventually brought others to their doors. The inhabitants of Hey’s Alley leaned against their doors, folded their arms and watched.
Finally Captain Fury climbed out. He told the driver to call back for him in exactly one hour. ‘And don’t forget, will you?’
‘No, sir.’
That was reassuring, anyhow. The taxicab drove off through clouds of smoke. Desmond hardly glanced at Hey’s Alley or its inhabitants. He knocked at the door. It was opened by his father.
‘Oh! It’s you, is it?’
‘Yes. It looks like me.’
‘Better come in.’
The man drew back, Captain Fury entered. Then the door closed. And with it all the other doors in the Alley. Hey’s Alley for the moment had gone to sleep. A captain. An army captain. They closed their doors, but there was wonder upon their faces. The Captain was not a man at all. Simply a phenomenon.
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About the Author
James Hanley (1897–1985) was born in Liverpool, England, to an Irish Catholic family. He spent time in the merchant navy and served with the Canadian Infantry during World War I. From 1930 to 1981 Hanley published forty-eight books, including the novels Boy, The Furys, The Ocean, Another World, and Hollow Sea. He penned plays for radio, television, and theater and published a work of nonfiction, Grey Children, on the plight of coal miners. Hanley died in London but was buried in Wales, the setting for many of his works.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1936 by James Hanley
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9986-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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