Our Time Is Gone (69 page)

‘Time,' she said. ‘Oh, God, Peter, time! I'm to go. God keep you! You poor child! Why, I——'

‘Ssh!' he said, as there came one loud knock at the door.

‘Mother!' He clung to her, kissed her passionately, on eyes, nose and mouth.

He heard the door open, the warder come in. The clock ticked.

‘Peter! Oh my God! My son! Be good—Peter. Look after yourself. Remember what I said. Think of that. Please! It's everything. It's
all
that matters.'

She was crying again, her breath was hot upon his face, the words poured out in a torrent, and then his own mixed with hers, as he stammered:

‘Yes, Mother! I'll not forget. Remember me to—I won't forget. Tell Anthony——Oh, Mother—will you—tell Joe——I—will you send me Maureen's address? I'll do what you say. Don't go! Don't go!'

‘Time now,' the man said.

‘Time now,' the clock ticked.

‘Time now!'

They clung together in the middle of the room.

The man approached them.

She kissed him, pulled down his head, kissed his close-cropped hair. ‘Look after yourself. God and His Sweet Mother look to you. Oh, dear Peter!'

He sobbed. ‘Go now. It's time. Good-bye, Mother. Good-bye, Mother.'

He could not free himself. She clung—her arms were like steel bands encircling him. He looked at her face and it was sad, and it was full of hope.

‘Good-bye, Mother. I—when——Oh—tell Father—good——'

The warder approached, put his hand on the woman's arms. ‘It is gone time,' he said, and gripping her began pulling her away.

‘Christ! Oh no—no! Peter. Good-bye—good—bye——'

‘Good-bye, Mother. Write to me! I'll write to you. I'll write—I'll——'

‘This way.'

The man was forcing his mother through the door. Another warder came in, approached the lad, but now he made one last rush to the door, tried to embrace his mother, caught only the hem of her sleeve, put it to his mouth—and she was gone.

The door closed.

He cried. She
was
gone! All the way back. To the end of a world. To the end of a world! And he had once spat upon notes and plastered them on her face. Her sad face that was full of hope. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He went out. The door closed. The room was empty. The walls as bare, the clock's tick as loud, the stuffed grate as drab.

The air was free of the warm words. The words had followed her to the end of a world. The air was free, the stone was free.
She
had gone.

PART III

INTERREGNUM

CHAPTER XI

I

It was always hard going from the Strand at Ballin up to the Big House. Nobody knew this better than Mr. Cullen the postman, who, as he pushed his bike up the hill, studied the broad back, the tall figure, the big feet of an English officer who climbed the hill ahead of him. When eventually he came level with him he was surprised to discover that the officer's coat collar was thrown open, his tie undone, which hardly seemed dignified in a captain—‘and that,' murmured Mr. Cullen, ‘is what he is.'

‘Am I right for the Downey estate?' asked Desmond Fury as the postman drew level, and then he saw this hot, perspiring postman, saw his red and wrinkled neck. How hot it was to-day! They looked at each other.

‘Yes, sir! This is the way. Powerful hot to-day, sir,' announced the postman.

‘Very,' replied Captain Fury, and marched on. If he'd known it was going to be all uphill like this, why he might have taken a car. He wiped his forehead.

‘Never seen an August like it, sir!' said the postman, and wheeled his bicycle with an almost fierce energy, trying to keep up with the captain. A gentleman to pass the time of day with was half the hill climbed. ‘
Terrible
hot!'

‘Indeed.'

‘Yes, sir. The hottest August we've had for years in Ireland. Powerful hot, too!'

‘Where exactly is the Ram's Gate?' enquired Desmond, and he stopped a moment to look back down the hill. How white the low walls, how hot and dry the stones.

‘You mean the Big House, sir. Sure nobody calls it the Ram's Gate now, since Mr. Downey went off to London. Ah! sure it's a big owld place going to pot.'

‘What was Mr. Downey like?' asked the Captain. It seemed time to be curious.

Mr. Cullen took a good look at the Captain. ‘Ah! Sure he was just like one of us.'

Further than that the postman would not go.

Desmond Fury stopped again. Looked back. Below he could see the silken sheen upon the blue waters. He glanced up at the sky. Deep blue, cloudless. ‘By God! it's hot to-day!' he announced.

‘'Tis so.'

Desmond Fury, with the postman six yards behind, at last reached the top of the hill. He was at the beginning of a lane. A long narrow lane banked by overgrown and sprawling hedges, the lane itself running amok with weed, and here and there, threatening the high stone wall, weighty branches of fir and pine.

Mr. Cullen came level again, and he saw how the Captain looked at things. ‘The place is going to the dogs, sir,' he said.

‘Is it?' asked Demond, taking three strides to Mr. Cullen's one, and squashing flowers and weeds in his path. They reached the end of the stone wall.

‘Here you are, sir,' he said. ‘Good day to you,' and Mr. Cullen went on down the lane.

Captain Fury stopped dead.
This
was the place. This was where
she
had come from. Somewhere about this part of the country he had met Sheila. Inside this gate she was born, lived, ran away from it. ‘H'm,' he said.

The big white gate was in front of him. Nettles, thistles, chickweed grew in abundance upon the drive. It grew up riotously on either side of the gate. Flanking the drive the tall trees with their dead and dried limbs shooting out from the masses of foliage, and the whole weight and mass of it trembled with the burden of heat. At the end of the drive Captain Fury saw a door painted green. Its paint was blistered and flaking, and on the step was a milk-can with a note attached to its lid. He tried to push open the gate, but found it impossible. Nature had closed it more securely than any bar or bolt. He climbed over the gate and stood in the drive, looking about him, hardly noticing two rabbits that suddenly dashed across his path. A sea of weed. This was
her
place. He began slowly walking down the drive. It was like walking on a thick pile carpet. He stopped again.

Was it the heat, was it the menace of decay, that made him sit down and stare? Was it the house that somehow proclaimed that all inside was dead, as dead and silent as it was outside?

A curious feeling passed through the Captain. He had come a long way. And he had lied to Sheila, but here he was, sitting on his haunches staring up at this enormous white structure hidden away in the trees. He opened his shirt and breathed heavily.

‘Hell! The heat here!' The trees held it in, the drive under his feet shot up waves of heat, it throbbed in the air—and what an orgy of smells!' Phew!' he said. ‘It's strong!' but what, he didn't exactly know.

Well, here he was anyhow, and he was going to have a look at it. Perhaps this was only the beginning, the skin of the whole, and into his ear there began to drone Lieutenant Downey's ‘ten thousand acres, trees, lakes, rivers.'

He got up, fastened his tunic, buttoned his shirt and put on his tie. Then he went on down to the green door. He didn't ring the bell at first, but looked back up the drive. At this end it seemed cooler, for it was more shaded, and an enormous tree spread foliage over the roofage. He followed the path with his eye, it ran on to what looked like a large lawn, then a high hedge, and beyond that were trees. He tugged at the bell.

Suddenly he thought: ‘To hell with it, I'm going back!' He felt lonely, even a little afraid. The silence, the heat, and all these trees, glutted around the house, and that sprawling thing over his head that seemed designed to crush everything, so firmly did its hold upon the house proclaim itself, its massive weight of trunk leaning towards the wall, its foliage spreading over windows, gutters and roof.

‘Damn it!' he said. ‘Looks as though the blasted place was empty.'

After two more tugs at the bell he discovered that it didn't function. He rapped on the door. ‘What a place!' he said.

The door opened, partly, and a woman's head appeared. Captain Fury was so surprised by the look on this face that he drew back a pace before he said: ‘Good afternoon.'

‘Good afternoon,' the woman said. Already she seemed to be slowly shutting the door.

‘This is Mr. Patrick Downey's place?' enquired Desmond. ‘The Ram's Gate?'

The woman bowed her head. ‘Yes. This is the place. What does the gentleman want?' her eyes said, and then the whole of her appeared from behind the door. She was a slightly built woman of medium height, about forty, with deep-set and very piercing grey eyes. Her black hair was drawn back from the forehead and done into a bun on the back of her neck.

Captain Fury, however, watched her hand on the door. It moved up and down, round and round. It seemed to be a complete entity, it functioned quite separately. Somehow it didn't belong to her body at all. She was dressed in black satin blouse, buttoned high about the neck, a black skirt. A white bone brooch was pinned at the breast just below the right shoulder.

‘She looks very cool,' thought Desmond. ‘This must be the woman John Downey didn't like.' The one he was afraid of. Just looked like any ordinary housekeeper to him. Rather like the kind that looked after priests.

‘My name is Fury,' he announced. ‘Captain Fury. I have come to look over the place.' He spread his legs apart, hands resting on his hips.

‘Yes,' she said, and never for a moment took her eyes off him. ‘Yes.'

‘You are Miss Fetch?' he said.

The woman put one hand to her eyes, as though to shield them from the light of the sun, though there was no sun there. She even blinked. ‘I am,' she said. ‘What is your business?' apparently ignoring his previous announcement. Then she stepped back into the hall. Her very attitude, her expression seemed to say: ‘I am not interested.' Fury! Had she not heard that name somewhere before? Surely. It couldn't—it wasn't—well! Well!

Desmond looked away and up the drive towards the gate.

‘Very hot to-day,' he said, and wiped his neck with a blue handkerchief.

‘Have you any authority to look over the estate?' she asked, shifting from one foot to the other, whilst the hand roamed over the brass knob on the door.

‘I have,' he replied, and took a wallet from his pocket, from which he took a card. He handed this to her, and watched both her hands as she read it.

‘Lieutenant John Downey—Ram's Gate, Ballin,' and in the lower left-hand corner: ‘United Services' Club.'

She handed him back the card. ‘You had better come in,' she announced, and stood aside for him.

Captain Fury stepped into the hall. ‘Thank you,' he said, and his feet sounded thunderous upon the blue tiles, down the centre of which ran a long strip of black carpet. The door closed. He was inside at last. In
her
place. The place she hated. He smiled to himself. What would she think if she saw him standing in this hall? Instead of being on important business at Gelton! Well, here he was, and what she might think didn't matter a damn. He was
in
the place. He could see it, feel it, smell it.
Her
world. His eye roved the cream walls.

‘This way, please,' Miss Fetch said. She led him down the hall, opened a door, and passed in first—Miss Fetch always did—and Captain Fury followed.

It was a long room, high ceilinged, from which hung an enormous chandelier, and one broken chain dangled untidily. It was coated with dust. The eyes of two gentlemen in frames followed the Captain to the chair which was offered him, and which he sat upon with the utmost caution. He hadn't seen a chair quite like it before. He felt uncomfortable, and would have much preferred the sprawling comfort of the couch. But that was covered with a long white dust-cloth, and covered so securely that it seemed to say: ‘Keep off.' The floor was polished, but the green carpet that somehow fawned before the massive brass of kerb and accessories was thin, almost threadbare. The walls were blue. The grate was stuffed with brown paper. A beautifully decorated brass screen lay useless against the wall alongside a chest of drawers. Some of its drawers were open. He saw the hem of a dress, the sleeve of a shirt, some parchment papers, sticking out of them.

Having seen him seated, Miss Fetch stood on the carpet, hands clasped, and took a good look at the visitor. She liked looking down at people.

‘Were you thinking of purchasing the estate?' she asked, and one felt she was strongly tempted to say much more—but perhaps it was the expression on the Captain's face that decided against it. ‘A teamster in fancy dress,' thought Miss Fetch. She watched him; the eyes in the frames watched him.
Her
eyes said: ‘Who are
you
?' The eyes of the gentlemen in the frames said: ‘Intruder!' and the Captain's eyes said only one thing: ‘I am in dreamland.'

‘I had thought of taking it over,' announced the Captain in the most casual way.

‘I see! You must excuse me a moment. I may be able to show you over the house,' she went on, ‘but as for the outside, I'm afraid I shall have to leave you to yourself. I am unable to show visitors the estate. Nobody comes here, at least without due notice,' she wound up, and turned on her heel and left the room. ‘That's meant for you, teamster,' Miss Fetch's back seemed to say. And the Captain looked hard at Miss Fetch's back as she passed through the door.

‘My God!' he thought. ‘I can't see anything marvellous about it yet.'

He got up. What a relief! He looked at the chair. What a back, what legs! Like four painted match-sticks. He wanted to kick it to pieces. He wandered about the room, picking up this, feeling that, examining the other. The eyes on the wall followed wherever he went. ‘Intruder!' they said. ‘Intruder!'