An End and a Beginning (23 page)

She came on up, and the man did not move from the bed. “Now she's here I'm scared stiff, I can't move,” waiting for the knock.

The handle turned, the door opened. She saw him sitting on the bed, and from the doorway she smiled at him, and remained standing there, as motionless as he, the sudden shock of recognition a barrier. He got up and walked slowly across the room. He held out his hand, and she took it, and said softly, “Peter. At last. Thank God.” He was stiff, speechless, just staring, feeling the hand in his own, and for a moment the distance of years seemed no wider than his own spread fingers. He received her smile, her scent, and was afraid of her nearness to him.

“I'm glad it's over, done with, finished for ever,” she said.

He drew back a little, but she clung to his hand, and said quietly, “Are you comfortable here? Has Miss Fetch looked after you properly?”

“Yes,” he said, “thank you, Sheila.”

“How
are
you?”

Words would not come, and he gave her only a faint smile, conscious only of the warmth of the hand that lay in his own. He could not answer that question, not now, in this moment. He just stared, and went on staring.

“I meant to meet you the morning you came out, but I couldn't manage it. I'm sorry.”

“I was met,” he said, woodenly.

He moved, and she moved, the door closed behind them. Slowly she drew him towards the window, and he let himself be drawn. There were many changes. The light from the window fell upon him. He would soon be quite grey. It seemed wrong at his age. And the features were considerably sharpened, and against the pallor of his skin the eyes appeared to be a little too bright. She noticed a stoop, a hunched right shoulder. He had gained much weight. The fingers of his left hand clutched at his lapel, and seemed never to be still. She sensed an extreme nervousness in him, she thought he looked much older than his years. Suddenly she ran her fingers through his hair. Slowly, finger by finger she covered his face, like a blind person who builds as he traces, feels as he builds. He was aware of her lightness of touch. He partly turned his head, as though he were afraid to look, letting his eye fix itself upon the belt of oaks, and he found himself counting them, and they were the same number as they were before. She turned his head, looked at him.

“Grey,” he thought, “she's grey.”

“We've both changed,” she said.

“We have indeed.”

“Yes?” she asked, hearing the knock.

“Everything's ready now, ma'm,” Miss Fetch said.

“Thank you. We'll be down directly.”

They listened to her quick descent, the creaking stairs.

“You got my letters?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And Mr. Kilkey's?”

“Yes. I got them.”

Miss Fetch was calling again; Miss Fetch was merciless.

“I'd better go down now,” Sheila said.

“Yes, of course,” seating himself on the bed again, watching her go, hearing the door shut.

“Extraordinary,” he exclaimed, “she's not altered much. Not
very
much.”

“There's the luggage in the hall, sir,” Miss Fetch said. “Perhaps you'd remove it.”

“Directly,” he said.

“I had better go down.”

Descending the stairs he heard the crackling sounds of burning wood. The cold, unoccupied years of another room were going up in smoke. Standing in the hall, noticing the amount of luggage, he thought, “I wonder why she came?” He heard voices. They were discussing him. Was Miss Fetch looking after him properly? Was his room comfortable? Had he enough bedclothes? Was there anything he specially wanted? He picked up the luggage and carried it to the top of the stairs.

“Your breakfast is out, and getting cold.”

“I'm coming.”

With difficulty he found the room; there were so many, and it was so easy to get lost. As he reached the door he heard Sheila talking to the housekeeper.

“Is Father Breen still here?”

“I'm afraid not, ma'm. Indeed no. He's gone this five years ago.”

“And the village?” she asked.

“It's no different at all, not a bit, ma'm.”

“The last time I was in this room,” Sheila said, “oh, that's a long time ago, isn't it? But now, Winifred, it's exactly as it was then.”

Listening outside the door he thought it sounded like the hurrah of some gratified child. He entered the room, and immediately Miss Fetch went out.

“I left the luggage at the top of the stairs, Miss Fetch. I didn't know to which room it should go,” Peter said.

“Thank you,” and the housekeeper left them.

He noticed she had drawn both curtains across the window, saw the two candles burning at either end of the table. His place had been laid, he had only to sit down. But he remained standing, staring about.

“Not a nice morning at all,” she said. “I shut out the clouds. Not a very nice journey either, but here I am.”

And there she was. They looked at each other as he sat down. No word was spoken. In the momentary silence, under the light of candles, they might have been reflecting upon the annihilation of time.

“Do eat.”

He began his breakfast. “A very small room,” he thought. Lacking the light, the furniture, it might have been another cell.

“It used to be Father's study,” she said.

“Was it?”

He pecked at the food, his hand trembled when he picked up the cup, he was watching her hands, her fingers, her nails. They fascinated him. He refused to look upwards.

“Don't say anything if you don't wish to,” she said, but he hadn't heard, wasn't listening, just staring at the hands, the fingers. He remembered the hands, he had never forgotten them. Light flashed from a ring upon her third finger.

“More tea?”

He shook his head. “No thank you, Sheila.”

Only the hair was visible, the wide forehead. She watched him fumbling in his pockets. He took out a packet of cigarettes.

“Cigarette,” he said.

“I never smoke, Peter,” she said.

“Sorry. I quite forgot,” he replied, as hundreds of fingers tore at the packet, as one and then another cigarette fell to the floor, and he bent down and picked them up.

She stared at this new man, this stranger, this deep, lockedin, locked-up creature who had crossed the seas on a winter night. She sat there, and waited, and wondered.

“Stiff,” she thought, “nervous, afraid to talk.”

She leaned across the table and took his hand. “I'm glad it's all over, I'm happy about it,” she said.

“Perhaps I should never have come here,” he said.

“But why not?”

“I don't know.”

Smoke clouded up, and in a moment he seemed to have risen with it, he wasn't there, and she knew this, as she pressed upon his hand. She lowered her eyes, watched his fingers, the cigarette. He was far away. It was night, and he was standing on the deserted deck of a ship, and he was watching Gelton go. He watched the gradually disappearing lights of the city. He had always hated it, loathed it, for what it had been, for what it could do to people, yet at the final moment, when the lights dimmed and went out, he knew it was his home, his root, his life lay there. And in the corner by the poop he suddenly spoke aloud the names of those he had known there. And as he pronounced into the night air an officer had come by and asked him what he was doing there, a forbidden part of the ship. But he gave no answer, and walked away, and went below to his cabin. He sat there for a long time, and he thought of his home, his parents, his brothers, his sister. And he knew that had he gone ashore at that very moment, there was not one of them whom he would find. After a while he had gone out, returned to the secret corner of the poop. When he looked back Gelton had vanished altogether. He had felt sorry, felt glad. There had been nothing but the sea, and nothing but its sound. And he had walked round and round the deck, staring at this ocean of water.

“I felt so bloody desperate,” he said at last.

“I know. I know,” and she pressed the harder upon his fingers.

“I loved my mother so much, so very much,” he said.

She suddenly turned her head away, she could not look at him, she let him cry.

“I should never have gone.”

“Where? Gone where, Peter. Where?” She felt in herself his coldness, his isolation, and for one single moment his innocent, pulsating youth.

“To Cork,” he stammered, “where else? It made me hate it all.”

Looking at this man she looked at his family, and she remembered them; the volcanic household in which each lived-in room was a cell, where lives warm under the pattern of union were yet as distant and lonely as those of whales tossing in oceans. It made her remember the mother whose whole life had become a kind of living dream, and of the father forever linked in a blind and selfless devotion, the years of whose life had been spent before the fires of ships that seemed never to have gone out. She thought of his ship docking, a voyage ended, and of the strange, sweet mysteries of their occasional reunions. A family held fast together by the warmth of blood, and the iron of Gelton.

“I wonder where the daughter Maureen is?” She remembered her also, remembered the brothers, and of how, once upon a time she herself had come among them, though only to touch the fringe of their separate, tumultuous, and sometimes ruthless lives. An indestructible family, and yet destroyed, scattered by the very explosions of their own natures. She thought of the man at the table, so close, so different, another person, and remembered she had once loved him, on his most youthful and happy day. For a fleeting moment she had the warmth of the stolen hour under her hand. “Horrible,” she thought, “how lonely he must have been.”

“Look at me, Peter,” she said, and he looked at her.

The question she would have asked him died away on her lips. Suddenly she put a finger to her mouth.

“Ssh! She's outside the door, she's listening,” Sheila said, whispering from behind her raised hand.

“Who?” he asked, and quickly withdrew his own from the table.

“Miss Fetch,” she said.

The information only bewildered him the more, and he turned round and faced the door. “
Who?
”

And she whispered back, “Miss Fetch. She was always a great watcher. She used to watch my father. I know. I have occasion to. I remember it all so well. If my father came round a corner, through a door, up the stairs or down, she was there, she was passing through,
at
the time, to some room or other in the house, because she had to; always she seemed to have left something behind her. She came to this house just before she was sixteen, out of a fisherman's cottage. My father wanted her then. And he took her——”

“Who?” he asked again, still unable to take it in.

“Miss Fetch. She's there now, listening, outside that door.”

“Come in, Winifred,” she called loudly, and the door opened, and the housekeeper came in.

“I'll clear away now, ma'm.”

“Do,” Sheila said.

Peter immediately got up, crossed to the window, opened it, and went out into the garden.

“Well, Winifred,” Sheila said, “and what have you been doing with yourself all these years? You hardly look a day older, no different at all. You'll outlast the lot of us.”

“Ah! Sure it's nice to see you home again, ma'm,” slowly moving up and down the table, collecting things, and then she picked up one of the lighted candles as though to extinguish it, but instead held it high in the air as she gave the other woman a long and penetrating stare.

“She'll be as old as myself one day,” she thought, with intense satisfaction.

“Tell me about things, Winifred.”

“What things?”

“Oh, anything you like, everything, tell me about yourself.”

“There's little to tell, ma'm. I still hear regularly from your father——”

“Of course. Your wages.”

“He's still in London, same hotel. Imagine it, all those years. He'll stay for good I should think.”

“Maybe.”

“Your brother is still in the same old place, China coast, he writes me now and again. I always liked the lad. Very loyal, ma'm,
very
loyal,” Miss Fetch said, her expression changing, as though to say, “and he was the only one that was.”

Suddenly she blew out the other candle. “Letter writing's a bit of an effort these days, ma'm.”

“Are the Hennesseys still here?”

“Sure they're away out of the country long ago, five years now. Good riddance some said, though I'm not too sure about that. The whole country's falling to pieces these days.” She leaned across the table. “Will you be staying here long?” she asked.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” replied Sheila.

“The old place has been lost far too long maybe, though a lucky old place it is. Isolated we are by the mercy of God, and only by that were we saved the petrol splashes of the boyos. A fiery lot of men roamed this country, ma'm, and an incredibly lazy lot they were at times. Perhaps you can thank them that this house is still standing up on two legs. Will the gentleman be staying long?”

“Not long,” Sheila said, making to rise, then sitting down again. “I shouldn't imagine he will.”

“Ah! Sure I'm glad to hear that, too. I never could take with strangers in the house, ma'm, you know that. And when he arrived here, round midnight it was, why a more dreadful sight you never saw. Come all that way from England without an overcoat to his back. Most frightening it was. Looked just like a burglar to me when I opened the door on him, and might well have been sleeping under a hedge most of the day.”

“He's had a difficult time.”

“I know that. The whole lot of it. We read the newspapers in Ireland, too.”

Miss Fetch leaned closer, confidentially close. “If it's not being presumptuous on my part, ma'm, will your husband be joining you?”