Winter Song (46 page)

“I
was
thinking of going to New York.”

“Have you heard of a place called the Ram's Gate, at Rath Na?”

The man pushed his cup and saucer across the desk. “I've heard of it.”

“You might go there for a while, try to adapt yourself to the changes. There is nothing in Gelton for you, nothing at all. Now for the rest of the news. Your brother Anthony is at present in China, one of the naval stations. Being a sensible lad he stuck to what he knew best. His wife now lives in Dublin. Mr. Kilkey is still in Gelton, though he has moved to the southern end of the city. He still works, but only fitfully, he is getting an old man now. He has a son, Dermod, now at sea. Your brother Desmond is now on the Gelton Council. At last, an Alderman. He worked hard enough for it. His wife returns from Ireland to-morrow. I may say that it was her suggestion that you should go to Rath Na, and that you should stay there until your brother can arrange a passage for you to New York.”

“Her suggestion?”

“So I understand from his solicitor,” said Mr. Delaney.

“Has he a family?”

“I don't know. I never make enquiries where it is not my business to do so.”

There was an abruptness, a coldness about Mr. Delaney's reply. “Surely there is not lying at the back of your mind the senseless idea of continuing with that affair. Take my advice. Leave well alone. You have a life to build up, your life. You know about your father?”

“I heard about it,” the man said. “As for what you were thinking about, it never crossed my mind,” and he thought fiercely, “How soon can I get out of here? What is all this? A dream?” Suddenly he had reached for his cap.

“Wait!”

“I've no intention of waiting,” the visitor replied. He was on his feet.

Mr. Delaney rose. There was something dignified in his bearing as he walked round the desk to Peter Fury. He caught his arm, and the visitor was amazed at the strength of his grip. He forced him back in the chair.

“Sit down,” said the small, tight mouth, and it seemed inevitable. “You don't wish to hear about your mother?”

“Not a word. I want to get OUT,” he shouted at the old man. “I want to GO.”

“Go where?” Mr. Delaney's voice appeared to come from the heights; the words fell like stones. He returned to his chair. He dragged it back to where his visitor was seated, he sat down by him.

“Listen to me. You are still a young man, and there is the first duty to yourself. You must build up your life. This is not moralizing, I hate moralizing. This is brutal fact. You
must
, it's a duty to your own manhood, your dignity.”

He laid a hand on the other's knee. “Let me assure you that your case is not important, carries no distinction whatever, it is a common case, a very common one. Many men have left their youth behind stone walls. Now look at me, straight at me,” and his eyes fastened on his visitor, “I made a test of you. That bit of paper that I sent off by Mr. Prently of the D.P.A.S.—cryptic—well a very few words suggesting you should contact me. I wanted to see how much was left, how much iron. Am I talking to something in the nature of a miserable deflated penny balloon, or am I talking to a man? Fifteen years may have taught you nothing. I don't know. Am I right or wrong? I know nothing of your brother, or his wife, I am not even interested, let me assure you of that. But I believe that the moment you leave here you will make frantic endeavours for the old things, the old pattern. You try for the contacts, try to gather together the strands and patterns of former experiences. Perhaps out of a kind of revenge, or a kind of vanity, and end up by telling yourself that it was all only yesterday. Be sensible. Do as I ask you. Make up your mind to forget the past. Bury it, since it often exacts a humiliating price from the future. Most of the miseries of creatures comes from this, this trailing the past behind them, ever unwilling to let it go, hook, line, and sinker, if I may use that term. My advice to you is to work, and to hope.”

He began to cough, and drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and spread it across his mouth, and from behind it he said, “Excuse me.” Then he put away the handkerchief.

“If I give you Joseph Kilkey's address, will you promise to go and see him? As I said, he is an old man now. He has never recovered from his experiences as a conscientious objector in that war, and he still carries that frightful scar. However, I know he kept contact with you all those years, but he would do that, it is one of the principles of our society. I know he would like to see you again. Will you promise me two things, Mr. Fury? First, to go right along now and see Kilkey, and secondly to come back to me at this office at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. Can I have your promise?”

“What happened to my mother?”

“Mr. Kilkey will tell you.”

“Has he ever found his wife?”

“You refer to your sister?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Who is that?” called Mr. Delaney.

“Miss Francis,” piped a high feminine voice.

“Do please come in.”

Miss Francis came in. She was dressed entirely in blue, and she carried a soiled brown-paper parcel under her arm. She glanced at the visitor. “Another one.”

“I've been down to Lawton Street, and have seen that woman.”

“Mrs. Corles?”

“Yes, Mr. Delaney.”

“Do sit down,” he said, and took a chair to her. “You won't mind this gentleman being here. We understand each other too well for that. Now about Mrs. Corles?”

Miss Francis put down her parcel.

“Here are the things, Mr. Delaney.”

“I presume the police put them together.”

“Yes. The sergeant handed them to me half an hour ago.”

He opened the parcel, from which he extracted a blue handkerchief, a pair of scapulars, a cheap pair of spectacles without case, three silver coins, two photographs, a scissors, a small leather purse. This contained a single halfpenny.

“Where was she found?”

“Behind the area at Grand Street, just a hundred yards away from the Angel.”

“I see.”

“She lives in Lawton Street.”

“Of course. I've the number here,” said Mr. Delaney, as he pulled a stub of pencil from his pocket. “Fifty-three. Thank you, Miss Francis,” he said.

Peter Fury glanced at the parcel's contents. They seemed to carry with them the very aura of their owner, the very breath seemed contained in the handkerchief.

“You see, Mr. Fury,” announced Mr. Delaney, as he looked up from the desk, “I really deal in human débris,” at which remark Miss Francis looked quickly up at the visitor.

“All right, Miss Francis, two o'clock this afternoon at 53 Lawton Street.”

Miss Francis got up and wished the old man a good morning. Glancing at the other, she wished him a good morning, too, and then was gone.

“One of my helpers, Mr. Fury,” said the old man. “What we learn in our work is the very essence of the human situation. What we discover is not the excesses, but the pathetic limitations. And you would be astonished, though we are
not
, not at the height to which the human creature can climb but to the depths to which it can sink. I say it in no admonishing terms, young man, it is far too tragic for censure. How unimportant you seem to me when I think of the creature picked up at half-past one this morning. But to return to the other matter. I hope you will do what I ask. I am thinking of your interests. I shan't hold you for a single moment longer if you will give me that promise. And, by the way, five shillings after fifteen years is humiliating. You require clothes.”

He handed Mr. Fury ten pounds, and added disgustedly, “And burn that horrible cap.” He stood up. “Well, good morning. I am glad you kept the appointment,” and he crossed the room. As he opened the door he said, “I noticed your interest in that girl. A Miss Tilsey, spinster, runs this establishment. You will have noticed the patrons, mostly middle-aged women, many of them unmarried. In her spare moments Miss Tilsey comes and helps me, and I am always glad of it.”

“How did you know I was coming out this morning?”

“Little we don't know, Mr. Fury, little we don't.” He pushed wide the door. “Take care of yourself. Good day.”

“A weak man,” he reflected, as he closed the door and returned to his desk.

“Yes, I must go and see Kilkey,” thought Peter, as he went slowly down the stairs. On the bottom stair he stopped dead. The noise, the chatter, came fresh to his ears.

“Not that way,” he thought, “there must be another way out.” He stood looking about him, then saw a long dark corridor, flanked by empty trays and biscuit tins. He went down until he came to a yard, and there, in front of him, lay an open gateway to the street.

Two waitresses were coming in his direction, and as they passed him he turned his head away, then ran through the gate.

“Can't look at people. What the hell's wrong with me?” He turned into a pub, and elbowed his way through the crowd.

“Yes?”

“Whisky.” He carried it away to the end of the room, drank it quickly, put the empty glass on the window ledge, and went out again.

“Another tram. No, I ought to try and change somewhere. I'll change at Kilkey's place. That's it.” He was walking blindly from one street to another, and he heard the roar of trams, and he couldn't find his way back to the main street; he was lost in a maze of alleys and areas.

“A 19a. Where are the trams?”

The boy looked up at him. “Just through there,” he said. He took sixpence from the man with the cap and didn't thank him.

“I've been walking in circles,” he thought, as he stood waiting for the tram. When it came he stood back from the other passengers, and when all had climbed aboard, he followed.

“Could you put me off at Bonin Road, I'm a stranger here.”

“Righto.” The tram moved off.

“It'll seem strange seeing Kilkey after all this time. Expect he's bent, really old, seventy if a day, must be. Can't believe him an old man somehow.”

He mused in his seat. He thought of Mr. Delaney, his mother, Anthony, his sister, of Rath Na.

“Been arranged. Damn them. I'll go to New York on my own.”

“Bonin Road.”

He descended the stairs, jumped off, and stood momentarily lost amongst the passengers on the pavement.

“Bonin Road. Is this Bonin Road?”

A man was only too ready to oblige. “This is Bonin Road all right,” he said, “tell Bonin Road from anything else in Gelton. It stinks.”

“Thank you.”

Peter Fury walked away, he began searching out numbers. “It's away at the other end. Fancy! I can't believe that in just a few minutes I'll be sitting talking to Joseph Kilkey.”

The nameplate, Bonin Road, stared down at him. That was the only thing that stared at him, since in Bonin Road he aroused no curiosity whatever.

“Wonder what he looks like?” He crossed the road, checking the numbers. It was a narrow street, so narrow that it almost shut out the sky.

“Always preferred the south to the north, but I don't know why, fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one—I wonder where Maureen is at this moment, wonder if she knows I was coming out to-day? Forty-five or something like it when he married her—should never have happened—it was asking for trouble—sixty-seven, sixty-nine—expect he's very old now—imagine Dermod being at sea—Christ, it makes you feel old—seventy-five, seventy-seven—here we are. At last. One-hundred-and-one, Bonin Road.”

He stood at the door, hesitant. Then he knocked, softly at first, then loudly. He had a sudden feeling of hopelessness, insecurity, of being lost, a great uncertainty. He knocked louder. There was no answer. He knocked yet again, and in doing so, the door gave to his weight; it had never been shut. He pushed it open and stepped inside. He entered the kitchen without a sound. And then he saw him. His eye took the measure of the man, the kitchen. It might have been only yesterday, in spite of that fellow Delaney. Mr. Kilkey was sitting in front of the fire. Peter Fury stood motionless, staring at the back of his head. His legs sprawled, there was something casual and comfortable about this man. One hand held the stem of a pipe, the other was fast in his trouser pocket, he puffed smoke upwards.

“Mr. Kilkey.”

“Joe.”

“Must have grown deaf. Mr.
Kilkey,
” he called loudly, and his eye ransacked. The objects in the kitchen, the cleanliness, the extreme tidiness, and he recalled Kilkey's ruthless habits. He had always been particular, even to the point of fussiness. The kitchen was dark. He glanced across at the windows, heavily barred outside. The table was cleared of everything save a cloth, a faded green cloth from America, covered with the most ornate designs. The alarm-clock, also American, ticked away. Familiar objects came under his eye. The canvas pipe-rack that had been a present from his father, the lace mats on the dresser, his own present to his sister. His eye searched out; it was like looking for old friends who have outlived their friendship. He walked slowly across the floor and touched the man on the shoulder. The pipe fell to the floor. The man jumped, he swung round.

“
You!
” He got to his feet, flung his arms round Peter, held him. The big bald head hardly reached to Peter's shoulders.

“My dear lad. It
is
you. I can hardly believe it. At last. Thank God.” Tears welled into his eyes, he smiled, he clutched Peter's hands.

“This is good. This is wonderful. At last! Well indeed!”

Peter was moved. It was the first time he had ever seen an old man cry.

“I meant to be outside this morning,” Kilkey said. “I heard. I knew the day, the time, but I couldn't, I couldn't manage. Got called out to a job.”

“Do sit down, Mr. Kilkey, do sit down,” Peter said, speaking close against the old man's ear. Then he shouted into it, “Have you gone deaf?”