Our Time Is Gone (85 page)

‘Oh! Those Furys—why I remember that case,' Father Twomey exclaimed.

‘I shall of course write to the children and tell them what has happened. This indeed is a return from the dead.…'

‘I've known cases of men turning up after two years, even three, who were assumed to have been drowned.…'

‘Well,' said Father Moynihan, ‘I shall now be able to persuade this woman to go home to Ireland and take the old man with her. It has been her pursuing dream for years. She has a sister there, living in a big empty house in Cork, the Mall, you know …,' and the other nodded his head—‘let them end their days there in peace! It is the best thing. There is nothing for them to remain for now, his days are numbered, one can see that, poor old chap—he'll never work again, never. Ah, but it's sad to be thinking of going home when there is no home. His wife did the most extraordinary thing on that hot July afternoon. She received a telegram that day about the sinking of the
Ronsa
, and in a sort of daze, went down to the shipping office to have it denied or confirmed. She left the door of her home wide open to the world, and never went back to shut it and has never been there since. Fortunately, her son-in-law heard about it and went down to Hey's Alley where she lived, he had the furniture put into storage, and then after a few visits paid to the woman in the Hospice, he decided to sell the few things there were—he knew she would not come away now—that all thought of home-making was finished. The few pounds he got he gave to the Mother Superior to look after for her. It will certainly carry them both to Ireland in comfort.'

He sat up in the chair, the smoking pipe dangling in his hand.

‘It was good of you to have contacted me right away. But I never expected as I came along here to be confronted by a man I'd long ago regarded as dead.'

Father Twomey took out his watch. He got up.

‘I wonder,' he said, ‘would you like to come up again, he may have waked.'

‘Yes, let us go up now.'

But looking into the room they found the man still sleeping, lying like a log, his heavy breathing filling the room.

‘He may sleep for hours.'

‘Let him sleep. But now I must go. You will call me again, Twomey, when the old man wakes up. You won't have him moved or anything—it is essential that I should talk to him. If I must prepare his wife for shocks, I must equally prepare him. It makes me glad I've known them so very long.'

‘I shall ring you at once. But I shall have a doctor here within the hour. He is very weak.'

They walked out again into the busy street, and stood there talking for a few minutes. Father Moynihan looked away towards the sea and thought of the old man in that sea and of the sea that had flung him back again.

‘It's sad, and at the same time it's wonderful,' he said—‘those two people united at last. They saw little of each other. Old Fury spent a whole life-time at sea except for a few years when he worked ashore … but that was always a cage to him, and I think, too, he was glad to escape out of it, and from the old woman's tongue. A simple man, too simple, for that woman who gathered the children round her and left the husband outside. Now they've all torn themselves away from her, and she has only him. I hope she will learn to be kinder to him now. But I must fly. Bye-bye, Twomey.'

‘Bye-bye,' Father Twomey gave a wave of the hand, smiled, then went back to the office.

Delahane was waiting for him, anxious, impatient.

‘That old chap's woken up, and his shouts made me nearly jump out of my skin. Will you come up at once, Father. He's been shouting about the sea, the sea on fire, somebody by the name of Lenahan.'

‘He's probably been dreaming. He may have had a nightmare. Let's go up.'

‘Yes, Father,' and he preceded the priest to the room where the old man lay.

When they came in, the old man was lying quiet in the bed, but he had heard the door open, and as they approached the bed, he opened his eyes and looked up at them.

‘Are you feeling better now?' Father Twomey asked him. He repeated: ‘
Are
you feeling
better
?'

‘Yes.' It was a bare whisper. He turned over on his side; ‘where am I?'

‘You are safe. You will soon be home.'

‘Where's Fanny?'

‘She will be here soon. Here, drink this.' He put his hand behind the old man's head, he held the glass to his lips.

After a moment or two, he withdrew the tumbler, sat back a little, and stared at Dennis Fury. He saw a shortish man, with iron-grey hair close cropped, long thin features, quite bloodless, and on his neck, seated like a vulture, the legacy from the sea. The partly opened mouth revealed blackened, broken teeth. The green-grey eyes were almost lost to view under the bushy grey brows. Somehow lying there with his knees drawn up, it seemed to accentuate the weakness, the fragility, of the old man. Father Twomey suddenly turned to Delahane.

‘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.