Winter Song (30 page)

‘Fanny.'

He came up and sat beside her, and she moved away from him as he did so.

‘I'm sorry for what I said,' Kilkey began, ‘really sorry, will you forgive me, Fanny?'

‘I'll forgive you,' she said—her eyes fixed on the furthermost bench.

‘Thank you. I got fair worried when you rushed out that time. I
am
sorry I lost my temper. It was a silly thing to do. Shall we forget it? Let's go back home now, I've left Denny all on his own.' He turned to look at her.

‘Fanny!'

‘In a minute.'

‘All right, I'll wait. I won't be bothering you.'

‘We're nuisances really, and I know it.'

‘You're not, Fanny. Don't be saying a thing like that.'

‘And you know it, too.'

‘You're wrong. I never thought such a thing. You're both very dear to me, believe that.'

‘We're nuisances, just the same. We're old—we're in the way—we're in everybody's way. I could tell that, that day I went off to those offices, everything was different. I didn't feel I belonged to it any more—all the people are different now. No warmth.'

‘I think you're wrong. And you're not old. Neither of you are old. It's Denny's awful experience and nothing more that's made him what he is to-day. But he'll be his old self soon, I'm sure of that.' He smiled at her.

She did not look at him—she did not want to. She spoke to the furthermost roof. ‘One time I would have said that, too, but not now, not now.'

‘Hadn't you better be coming along, Fanny?' he asked gently, idly he ran his fingers along the top of the bench.

‘Leave me alone, please. That's what Denny says. Leave him alone. I feel like that now. That man doesn't say much, but I'm sure he thinks a lot, and he knows, as I do, that though you're kind to us, you'll be glad when we've gone. Oh, I quite understand, Kilkey, it's perfectly true—you can see too much of people—you can be
too
close to them. Denny knows he's a nuisance, a hobbling old man. Well, we'll soon be gone.'

It saddened Kilkey. He made one final effort.

‘Well, you
do
forgive me for the hard words?'

She gave a sudden toss of her head. ‘I forgive you,' she said.

‘Well, will you come now, Fanny? I don't like leaving him alone like this.'

She got up. She allowed him to take her arm—they turned out of the park. He was so pleased at this reconciliation that he was on the point of saying ‘A letter came just after you went out. For Denny. It was from Desmond,' but he caught himself just in time. They passed through the gate into the street.

‘Fancy him not wanting to tell her about it. I wonder why?'

She turned her head, was studying him as they walked along.

‘Don't think for a moment, Kilkey, that I ever allow to pass from my mind the wrong that was done you by my daughter.'

‘It was not your fault, but Maureen's.'

‘All the same,' she said, ‘I see how lonely it is for you. All by yourself. At least I've got Denny, and he's got me—but you've nobody save a son you rarely see.' He warmed to her, ‘I've got used to this way of living, and somehow I can't be bothered any more. I spent five months, week-end after weekend tramping and travelling all over the North, hoping I'd find my wife, and nothing came of it. And Cornelius Delaney, too, he tried, his friends tried. I've given it up.'

‘Will you stay here in Bonim Road?'

‘I shall. Where else should I go?'

‘You wouldn't go back to Clare … ever?' she said, hesitantly, as if she regretted asking the question—yet his reply surprised her.

‘What should I be doing back in Clare—there was nothing to do there thirty-five years ago when I left, and it's worse now. I wouldn't be seen dead in the county—there's no employment for anybody. Why half the Irish population is earning it's living here.'

‘I never once thought of it that way. Maybe you're right. You've been here long enough to know what suits you best! But it's different with me. I left something there when I came away from it as a girl, and I know I'll still find that something waiting for me when I get back.'

They had reached the top of the road. He stopped for a moment and looked at her.

‘What is the something?' he asked.

‘I couldn't tell you that,' she replied, with great earnestness.

Half-way down the road it was she herself who stopped to say to him … ‘You know, you know as well as I do that we've upset everything for you. I thank you for Denny and myself for something my children could never somehow give us. And God knows it, too, how I've longed for it, and so has that man, a little real affection. What use is Desmond's money to me, with no heart behind it?'

‘I don't know, Fanny,' replied Kilkey, ‘and here we are.'

He was relieved to get back to the house. He did not wish to be drawn into any more conversations—any more speculations—he did not want to offer any more advice or sympathy—he was afraid.

‘I'm glad we settled our little tiff, anyhow. I don't want any bad feelings in these last days. I hope to God they'll both be settled in their minds, and ready to go.'

‘What on earth are you doing down on that floor, and all dressed up, too—what is the matter?'

‘I must have fallen out of bed,' he said.

‘With your clothes on—I left you all tucked in and so comfortable. What were you wanting to do?'

‘Nothing.'

She had sent Kilkey away. She had sent the woman away.

‘Oh, I'll be glad come Sunday, Denny—I'll be glad—we're nuisances here—I know it. That Kilkey man hasn't had a proper decent sleep since we came here. And that Mrs Turner, too, she doesn't say a word, and is kindness itself, but I know. Now, you just lie quiet there and not a word out of you. I've things to be doing. I don't want us to be here when he comes home in the morning, Denny. I've found out there is a train about half past eight, and all being well, we should be at that place by two o'clock. I'll make a few little sandwiches, and Mrs Turner has got me a little flask of brandy, so we'll be all right—now, don't you go worrying about anything at all. You mustn't excite yourself—take everything easy. You're not the man you used to be. Anybody could see, looking at you stretched out on the floor there with your coat and hat on, that some fine idea had flown into your head all of a sudden. When we picked you up just now you reminded me of a kitten. I'll have to watch over you well, Denny, I can see that.'

She kept moving around the room, opening and shutting the drawers of the dressing table. ‘You'll want a clean collar—you've a tie. I must clean up them boots of yours. Perhaps Kilkey can give you a collar—maybe I'll slip out and buy one.'

He lay listening, not to her, but to the opening and closing of the drawers.

‘I
am
looking forward to to-morrow, aren't you, Denny?'

She stood over the bed. ‘I wrote Peter this three days gone that we were coming. He'll be so excited, the poor lad.
So
excited. Sometimes when I think of it I can hardly get my breath. Oh, Denny, I do hope you'll be all right for to-morrow. Let's hope it will be a nice day. I haven't been on a train for such a long time. That last time I went off, there was a nun came with me. But I wasn't fit to go by myself then. Now I am—and it's you, Denny—it's your being here with me that's made the difference. I feel I can do anything now that we're together again.'

‘I wanted to take him some little something, some tiny little thing. I wish I could think of something he'd like.'

‘No, darling,' she said, ‘you can't do that. Not up to that stone place. You can't give anything and you can't take anything, and you can't touch anything either. Not there, Denny; why I'm afraid you don't know even yet in that moidered old mind of yours, you've got a fancy or two which will only turn to ice in the end. Peter's in a prison—will you try to understand? All you can do there, Denny, is to sit at the end of a great long table and stare your eyeballs out at somebody what's your own and whom the laws says you can speak to—you can open your heart wide there, I know—for them eyes that watch you from another place take no notice of the warmth and the blood in you aching, and your arms wanting to stretch down there and grow longer to touch him.'

‘I can't take
anything?
'

‘Nothing,' she said, ‘nothing. Don't be moidering yourself now. Oh, we're going to be very busy these coming days. When we come back from that place, why we'll be getting ready to move for the last time. I thank God, Denny, that you're strong enough now to come all that way to see our son, for I've had a feeling at me that if we
don't
go to him, something may happen. Foolish of me, maybe.'

‘Did you write to Brigid?'

‘All that's settled.'

‘And our pension over there?'

‘The old age is settled.'

‘And the compensation for me clothes?'

‘That's done, too,' she said.

She had her daughter's photograph in her hands—she was putting it back on the mantelpieec. ‘I wonder what you were doing on the floor with that in your hand.'

‘I was looking at her,' the old man said, ‘she was pretty them days.'

‘She was indeed. I'd like to see the creature myself, too, before we went away from here. But that would be looking for the moon. I sometimes ask myself what it is in me that upset them all, and drove them away.'

‘Drop that talk,' he said, ‘drop it into the deepest well of your mind and forget it. We've had enough of it. All I know is that I done them no harm.'

‘It's getting late,' she said, ‘I'll go down and make a hot drink for us both. I must set that old alarm clock too. I won't be gone a minute, Denny. I
do
hope you have a long, nice sleep. That doctor says to me, “Let him get plenty and plenty of sleep. That's what'll make a man of him”.'

The moment she was downstairs the old man dragged himself from the bed, and from the back of the drawer, fished out the letter from his son. From it he took the money. He put all except one note into his wife's black hand-bag, then he pushed the letter back, closed the drawer and got back into bed,

‘If she read that letter, she would get into a towering rage at the things he's said and—God help her—it's true. She knows it's true—the maddest things that ever were done were done by her, but I love Fanny for all that, and I'll say nothing. Nothing. I'll go where she goes now—I'll do what she wants me to do—I'll say yes always, and never no. I'll be at her side everywhere. The poor lonely woman—she has really nobody but me now, and I'm a damned old crock, not one of them gives a hang. I know it, I always knew it—from that moment I come back to this place. Ah, she looked so miserable, miserable, she was ashamed, she was sick in herself, she was done and that's the fact. Even now, if there was a chance of her putting a stitch of a sail together to this broken boat, she'd do it. If they came now she'd fall on their necks and love them. She'd the great trust in her all her life and sometimes she had her eyes opened for her. Ah, well.'

She came in with hot milk.

‘Would you like a nice piece of bread and butter?' she asked.

‘I'll have what you have.'

She sat down. ‘Just wait till I get home. There'll be lashings of fine things for you. And the air there and the quiet of the place—it'll build you up again into the man you used to be.'

‘Do you think so, Fanny?'

‘You will,' she said, ‘we'll be happy there.'

‘I was thinking this evening of all them children—John and Desmond and Maureen and Anthony and Peter, all of them together. I often wonder if they come lively to your mind like they come to mine. I can draw them close to me like that, Denny, like that,' and she folded her two hands close together. ‘Them days in the Hospice, why I used to get letters every day and I used to write the letters every day. Why the Mother there used to laugh and say “are they all going to relatives?”, and I'd say “yes, Mother, they are”, but they weren't, of course. I just used to write to them all over the place, but I never posted any of them, except to Anthony and Peter. And by and by, all them people were real to me, real as you are, Denny, and I loved to do it. I would lie and think of them all, opening those letters and them thinking of me hidden away there, like a mouse—that day I came away here I found twenty-five letters in my little drawer. And then I said good-bye in my mind to all them people, and I burnt the letters, because it didn't matter any more, for at the end of a long day, you were home again. And that first minute when they brought you through the door to me—why I've wrapped it in the softest velvet, and laid it away in my head, for I'll remember it all the days I live. Out of all that water, you came home.'

‘You really think I'll get all right, Fanny. Why this day I laughed at the bloody old scarecrow that peeped out at me from Kilkey's looking-glass, and I was ashamed of my own thinness, and me old bones—Oh, I wish I were a man again. Fancy, just to be back where I was. I don't want anything save the strength to stand straight again.'

‘Never mind, darling, you'll come right. You'll see. We'll have many a happy day with Brigid. I know you never liked her very much, Denny, but all the same she was a lovely woman, and she could laugh. Many a laugh we had, many a laugh we'll have again—and all this will just seem like the queerest old dream.'

‘I like you best when you talk like that,' he said, ‘I like you best like that.'

‘Now, I'd better take down them cups and wash them up. Would you like to be having a splash of water on yourself to make you feel fresh? It'll help you to sleep, too.'