Winter Song (3 page)

‘You took the names and addresses of the two men who brought him here, I hope? We shall have to get much more information from them. It is most extraordinary that the man should have been returned to his country in this manner.'

‘I've seen worse, Father, in my time.'

‘I doubt it.'

They spoke in whispers and all the time the man on the bed was watching them.

‘You were shouting in your sleep.'

‘Was I?'

‘Yes. Would you like another drink?'

The eyes closed. Father Twomey and Delahane turned away from the bed.

‘You rang for Dr McClaren?'

‘He should be here any minute now.'

‘I don't like the look of the old chap.'

‘Nor do I.'

‘Let's go downstairs,' Father Twomey said. ‘It's no use questioning him now. He's extremely exhausted. I can't get out of my mind the picture of this very sick man, standing in between two drunks on a crowded reeling train, for nearly five hours.'

‘Nor can I.'

They went downstairs again.

‘Perhaps he'll be better in his own home. I expect McClaren will have him shifted at once.'

‘He hasn't any home.'

‘No home.'

‘His wife, so I gather, has a room at St Stephen's Hospice. I daresay Father Moynihan will see to them both. They are his parishioners.'

‘He's coming again?'

‘Yes, but he'll have to see the old man's wife. It's going to be something of a shock. She is an old woman, and she had given up her husband as dead months ago. Indeed, she got some compensation and a small pension. It seems a pity that he has neither home nor family to return to. And, of course, he doesn't know. That's another job for Father Moynihan. Now I must get ready to meet those men coming in on the
Torsa
. I believe there are eleven of them altogether. Have a good fire in the big room, and ask Mrs Shane to have plenty of hot drinks and blankets ready.'

‘Very good, Father.'

He watched the priest put on his hat, pick up the umbrella and go out.

Delahane sat down.

‘What a lot of men get lost in the sea, poor devils.'

Through the window he saw the river, the ships, the tugs, barges, liners, the ferry boats, the wheeling gulls. ‘I'd better go and see Mrs Shane right away. Those men will be here in an hour.'

When he returned a few minutes later he found a tall, red-faced, very stout man sitting there.

‘Why, Dr McClaren, how are you? The man is upstairs. Will you come up?'

The doctor rose. ‘Where is Father Twomey? Isn't he here? Didn't he know I was coming?'

‘Of course, but he was suddenly called out. His work is much like yours, doctor.'

He led the doctor upstairs. As they went up, the doctor became even more abrupt.

‘What's the matter with the man? Is he
very
ill? I'm a busy man, you know that.'

‘Father Twomey would not ask you to come urgently if the matter did not seem to him serious.'

‘Tut, tut! Sailors are all alike. Handled them all my life, an unpredictable lot. Where has Father Twomey gone?'

They stood looking at each other on the landing.

‘This way, Dr McClaren,' said Delahane, completely ignoring the fussy man's question.

He opened the door, the doctor went in—‘This him?' he asked.

Delahane shut the door and went down to the office.

‘The callous old swine. He's never any different. I don't think he's got any pity at all. Upset because he was called away from “The Pitch Pine”, I expect.'

He sat down. ‘I shan't go up unless he calls. Damned if I will.'

He hated the ship's doctor. He had always hated him. A drunken sot.

And then he heard the thundering on the floor. Dr McClaren's heel was actually making the ceiling shake.

‘Coming,' shouted Delahane, ‘coming.'

Father Twomey lived at the sea's edge. He waited there, at all hours, and all weathers, for what the sea tossed up: the derelict, the sick, the wounded, the dying and the dead. They came from every ocean and, as he rushed off that afternoon to meet eleven shipwrecked men, he knew that the old man upstairs was only a fragment. He had always fought with the sea, he hated her, and yet he knew that sometimes, by an unpredictable mercy, men were yielded up, and Dennis Fury was one of them. Like the room he slept in and like the room he worked in, Father Twomey smelt of the sea. This ugly old house now painted a pretty white and green might close all doors and windows, yet not keep the sea out, for men brought in its very breath. He brought warmth into their cold nights and hope to the battered and broken pieces of men that the sea surrendered. This man Fury, they said, had no home to return to, but he was alive and many men were dead. He knew this and he went off to meet the newly arrived.

‘I expect McClaren has called,' he told himself, as he caught a tram at the corner of the road and was whirled northwards. ‘It's a hospital case, not less than that, but not too bad.' Nothing was ever too bad. He had to remember this whenever he thought of the women, the sleepless women and the sweated uncomforting pillows. He had once knocked on the doors of eleven houses in one Gelton street, and he had had to say that the sea was bare and the sea was silent. At all hours he had to rise from his bed to interview the women, the shattered hearts, he had to ration hope.

So each day, each night, he was called forth to confront the sea.

‘I daresay Father Moynihan will see to everything. It will be a shock for his old wife, a terrible one but beautiful.' He thought how, in the end, the deep simplicity of these men could, in frightful moments, come to their aid, like balm, closing down the doors in their minds and the terrible story. He remembered how the old man had slowly opened his eyes and looked at him—and saw them, blind with trust. Dreaming of fiery seas and dead youths clasped and held, and suddenly freed, and floating far away over ever-receding horizons.

‘Poor old chap, God help him, I say. But there has been mercy here.'

The tram rattled through the busy roads, on towards the water's edge, under a leaden sky, an air heating under a west wind, reeking salt.

‘One loves these men, one must go on loving them.'

‘Your stop, Father,' the tram conductor said, touching his hat and smiling.

All Gelton knew this fisherman, selfless, of untiring energy.

‘Good-morning to you.'

‘Good-morning.'

Father Twomey shot across the road, his cape flying in the wind. There was the sea and there the ship. And coming to the end of the quay, he saw them, lining the rails, looking out, waiting. Eleven lost men.

‘More fish, Father,' the dock-gate man said, ‘more fish to-day,' and he watched the priest go up the broad gangway, saw him shaking hands with the men, chatting to them.

‘And you,' he said, ruffling an already tousled head of hair, and the white-faced youth with frightened eyes said ‘North Atlantic, Father.'

‘And you?'

‘Pacific, Father,' the grizzled old man replied, ‘but I always knew she'd sink.'

They laughed.

‘We'll soon have you warm and comfortable. You all of you have your papers?'

They nodded.

‘Not now,' he said, pushing back proffered documents—‘at the House.'

Father Twomey turned his back on the sea, he stood, hands gripping the rails, waiting for the conveyance for these men. At any moment the battered old red bus would drive up and they would board her. He suddenly looked at the nearest man, very fat, bareheaded, barefooted, wearing borrowed clothes—‘I actually found a survivor from the
Ronsa
this morning, just think of that.'

‘The
Ronsa
, Father?' exclaimed the fat sailor, ‘why her was sunk a year ago, a whole year ago, him's lucky, by heck, who's him, Father?'

‘Just an old stoker.'

‘Oh! A stoker,' the fat sailor said. ‘Oh, I see.'

‘Anything wrong with a stoker?'

‘Oh, the black crowd are not too bad, Father, not
too
bad.'

‘And here's the bus,' Father Twomey said.

They lined up, holding their pathetic belongings in their hands, they filed slowly down the gangway. He shot questions at one and another of them.

‘Treat you well aboard this ship?'

‘Fine.'

‘Not too bad.'

‘Nice to be a passenger for a change.'

‘Yes.'

Suddenly he caught a tall, gaunt-looking man by the shoulder. ‘I've seen you before.'

‘Yes, Father, you have.'

‘I thought so. How many times have they sunk you?'

‘Three.'

‘Will you sail again?'

‘I expect so.'

He thought of them as children as he hustled them into the bus. Then he called ‘ready' to the driver, and the bus moved off. When it drew up outside the green gate of the Home, Delahane was already waiting for them. The men climbed slowly out of the bus.

‘Take these men to the canteen at once, Delahane. Then I want you to collect their papers. None I gather are Gelton men. They'll be travelling from all points of the compass.'

‘Right, Father. Follow me, men,' Delahane said. He turned to Father Twomey.

‘The doctor's been.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Says he ought to be got into hospital. Says the old chap is completely exhausted. You were right, Father, about that scar, but the doctor says it was caused by a piece of iron. He was with him for half an hour. He has left a note for you. Apparently there are blanks in the old chap's mind. There are some things he cannot remember.'

‘You had better come back here as soon as you have seen to a meal for those men.'

‘Father Moynihan came ten minutes ago,' Delahane said, ‘he's up there now.'

Then he went off with his charges.

‘Well,' thought Father Twomey, ‘that's one more the sea will never meet again.'

He hung up his hat, his umbrella, he glanced through the newly arrived mail. A boy brought in his evening meal on a tray.

‘Your supper, Father.'

‘Thank you, Owen,' he said.

Through the open door he could hear the noises from the canteen, the sound of clicking billiard balls, the sound of running water.

‘
Please
close the door like a good boy,' he said.

Father Twomey began his supper.

‘Where is my wife? She never came to see me,' the old man said.

Father Moynihan leaned over the bed. ‘You will see her very soon. The doctor tells me you will have to go into hospital for a little while. He says you'll be on the mend soon.'

‘Where is my wife?'

‘I've just said you will see her soon. Dennis Fury, you are a lucky man indeed to be lying breathing in this bed to-day. Are you too tired to talk now? Shall I come again? Could you tell me what happened?'

‘She went down fast.'

‘Yes, I know that.'

‘I swam.'

‘Yes.'

‘I was picked up. The boy was dead.'

‘What boy?'

‘His name was Lenahan. That day the sea was on fire.'

‘Did they take you to Bahia direct, Dennis?'

The old man paused, an utter weariness covered his face; after a while he began again.

‘I can't hear you—can you speak up?' the priest asked. He put his hand on the man's head.

‘They put me in sick bay on the
Turcoman
, after three days she was set on fire, it was very quick, they put me on a stretcher, lashed me down. There was no time, they dropped me in the sea again.'

He shut his eyes. ‘I'm tired. Why hasn't Fanny come? I want to go home. I'm tired. I want to go home.'

Father Moynihan got to his feet. Gently he lifted the old man's hands and put them under the sheet. ‘Sleep now. I'll come back and see you again,' and then the eyes opened and a flood of words broke across the old man's tongue, ‘Don't leave me here! Where am I? Who are you?'

‘My God,' thought the priest, ‘he has forgotten me again.'

He stood there, he felt unable to speak.

‘How on earth am I going to tell this man what has happened? How can I convey to him that there is nothing to expect?'

‘Take me home.'

‘Very soon,' said the priest, ‘very soon. I shall come and see you in the morning. Meanwhile you must try to sleep. You are a very tired old man.…'

‘I'm not old,' and it was the first real spark of life that Father Moynihan saw.

‘Good-bye now,' he said.

But the man in the bed did not answer, and Father Moynihan went out.

He felt sad and uncomfortable. ‘There is only me who can tell him, and he must be told. There is no home. His home is finished, his family are gone. What a homecoming! This man may not live and that would be merciful—against the terrible disappointment, the blow to his old heart. Everything is finished.'

He went downstairs and knocked at the door of Father Twomey's office. He was glad to sit there and share a cup of coffee with him.

‘I've seen the doctor,' he said.

‘Delahane told me. He must be shifted first thing in the morning.'

‘Then I must return again to-night, the sooner the man is told everything, the better. Apparently the scar is healed of itself, McClaren said, the sea water, I expect.'

‘I've just brought in eleven men,' said Twomey, he drank coffee, he ate toast.

‘You have wonderful patience, Joseph Twomey, you are a rather wonderful person.'

‘More coffee?'

‘No thanks. I must go. I've a service in ten minutes. You may rely on me to do all that's necessary with Mr Fury. There is still the wife to be told. However, she is a strong-hearted, courageous woman—she won't flinch. I know her of old. I've known many people in my time, Twomey, and I must say it gives me a great feeling to think that these old people are united again. I think they were always meant to be together in spite of all that has happened.'