Winter Song (31 page)

‘All right,' he said, ‘you bring me up the flannel.'

She went downstairs.

‘Ah.' he muttered, ‘I'm well pleased now—she's so cheerful to-night. So cheerful in herself.'

They lay awake in the darkened room. She had opened the window wide, and now the night air drove in. Beyond the window, piercing the blackness, she saw stars.

‘The old sky over there, Denny, d'you remember the flaming red of it over the river. And there it is as red as ever it was all them years ago. And men working there just the same, building their old ships for fools to sail in, that's all it ever was.'

‘I was thinking that same thing last night, Fanny, the men over there working away, and their bodies full of it, and I think it's fine to be working.'

‘When you're old you can't work. It was always the same.'

‘There's men older than me, Fanny. I've seen them and I know they're climbing ladders to decks and putting foot into riggings and singing at the bottom of a ship's hold—older than me by far. Ah, I wish that thing hadn't happened to me.'

‘More fools them,' she said. ‘How clear things are the moment you stop moving. As clear as water—who could wring more days out of you, Denny? None. There's none to wring. Try to get into your mind, for the love of Christ, that all those days are gone. Gone quick like something flying away from you.'

‘Sometimes I hate myself,' he said.

‘That's only silly.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Are you warm?' she asked. ‘I'll shut the window if you feel the cold at all.'

‘I'm all right.'

‘That's good! Think of Sunday morning, Denny. We'll be stepping ashore in that place where the hills are blue, and the children's voices are as soft as silk. All my life this place has been strange to me—but I took it because this was where your place was—at the sea's mouth, and stepping into old boats, trip after trip. But always strange, and grey sometimes—and hard like rock—and now it's all over.
All
over. Nothing more to do. Nothing more to worry about. Nothing. I do hope it's a fine morning. The places I've known. I'll take you back there—we'll walk along as peaceful as angels, seeing all the places again. There's a place there hidden away in the folds of two hills, Denny, where I stepped out when I was a child of twelve, and I remember the moment I washed my feet in a stream, and walked over grass, as green as green—and silent everywhere—and the warmth you felt in that closed-in place—the warmth of an arm-pit it was, and I was happy then. I hadn't come by roads at all, and never a wall, not like in this city, wall on wall it is, and an old slit of a sky to look at. That's where I'll take you, and I'll take you across the holy ground at Queenstown, and in the lee of a rock of that Cathedral I'll take you—and down that candle-lit place they took me when I made me first Communion. And some days we'll go to the Strand and some days we'll be off to French's place and Haulbowline and Youghal and Rushbrooke where my people lie. You'll rise up out of your old wreck of a self just to see those fine, high-climbing mornings.'

She felt him move, he had turned towards her. He gazed steadily at her.

‘All I want now is to get well, Fanny.'

‘You'll get well.'

‘You really think I will?'

‘You'll be as strong again, Denny, as on them days you could fling that old bag to your shoulder. But never a ship you'll go on, and never a ship you'll see.'

She smiled.

‘You're laughing at me,' he said.

‘I'm very serious indeed. Though you will get well, you'll work for men no more. No more, Denny. The mornings that are to come are just for you and me, and the days to come, we'll move about, Denny, we'll have time—no more alarmclocks—but all the hours free, and we'll be able to see those places which were rightly ours and we never had time to see. It makes you think of all the people who stayed there and have touched stick and stone everywhere. But what I'll like will be them boys singing in the Cathedral—I always liked that. Every Sunday at St Stephen's Place I would go out and over that garden and coming to the door I could hear the voices lifting up, silver and fine. And maybe, too, we'll walk into the market and see the liveliness there, and the lovely things in from the country that day. And maybe, one Sunday morning after Mass, we'll be away to Limerick and Mallow and them places. Perhaps, if they haven't forgotten it, we'll see them dance to an accordion one evening at the crossroads of some place or other, and the girls with hearts as light as air.'

‘The way you go on,' he said, ‘the way you go on and on. Ah, I can see now how I should never have taken you away from it at all, into a barbarous city, all steel and flint and ships and men's strength guttering the one way only. I can remember, Fanny, that very first morning I took you down the gangway at this place, and you explained about the towering walls that's shut you this fifty years or more. I should never have done it. You should have married a farmer, or a man from Guinness's place, or a traveller from Munster, not me, a harum-scarum man who never cared about anything except pacing the decks of ships and thinking it was wonderful at first, like a fine fairy-tale.'

‘Now it's you,' she said.

They both laughed, huddled under the clothes.

‘I'm glad you're laughing at last, Fanny. Glad, glad.'

‘If I'd been able to welcome you home in the old way, the way it would have lifted me up.'

‘Please,' he begged, ‘not that again.'

‘But we made mistakes and come to this.'

‘I won't answer you. For God's sake, leave well alone. Only a moment ago, we were talking finely—go on talking about them, Fanny. You could always see the fair things you couldn't reach. I think if you'd been born a man, you would have made a fine bishop.'

It broke the momentary suspension, it made her laugh, and he said softly, ‘Let's go to sleep.'

‘All right, Denny, but just tell me this, and I'll not ask you anything more this night.'

‘What?'

‘You
do
want to come, darling? You
do
want to. I'd not be wanting to drag you all that way 'cept that in my own mind I have an odd sort of feeling that I ought to go, and you ought to go, that it is our bounden duty to do this, well or ill.'

‘I shall go to-morrow, and I don't care how long that road is, for I know the poor lad must be sore and lonely shut away in that God awful place all these days, but a wonderful spirit to him—that letter he wrote us—at first I couldn't understand at all—him saying not for us to go.'

‘I know, Denny, but he didn't want to make you feel shamed in that place.'

‘His manhood rotting away there, and a mere thimbleful of words out of a man's mouth could tie him down in that place.'

‘One day he'll be home.'

‘Where is that?' he asked.

‘Just home,' she said, and the words stole from her lips as light as air.

She turned over on her side, she gazed out at the darkness, the few glittering stars.

‘Go to sleep. God give you the strength for to-morrow,' she said.

Later, she heard him snoring, she knew him sound and sleeping.

‘Poor old Denny! He's just like me—really, he likes the simple old things, we're both the same—we've always been the same. It's the children that don't understand, and never will.'

As she looked out, she seemed to see the darkness move away like a cloud and light was everywhere. She saw a green sea, she saw a little white harbour. She saw herself standing close in to the bow, her husband beside her, their eyes watching the moving water, and the slowly enlarging harbour.

‘It excites me, thinking about it, excites me! It doesn't seem real, not yet. How could I have thought it real—them months ago his name had sunk like a great stone, away out of my mind, as I saw his old bones tossed in that leaping sea. And yet, he's here—beside me—oh, it's wonderful—wonderful! I'm not lonely, no, I'm not. I've been wrong all the time and Denny's not lonely either. We're so lucky, close after all these years. No, it's him that lonely, poor Kilkey!'

She saw him quite clear before her. She saw him under the cluster of light, moving with other men over a ship's deck. And his wife away, lost, silent.

‘Poor Kilkey, a poor innocent sort of creature, and many a time we laughed at him, and that day they dragged him away from his little son and drove him before them like a bullock, and dressed him in those blood searching clothes of a cruel soldier. Ah, he was fair then, in them awful days, and took all they gave him and never a word out of his woman's mouth—never a word. The way they cut that man—the way they spat at him. Poor Kilkey, the kindest man I ever knew—I can't help thinking of him now—folded up like he is in his own loneliness—in this his room—and God help him he still believes she'll come back to him—her photo beside his bed—the way she hurt him, calling him ugly, calling him hateful—I did myself once on a time, and burned with shame afterwards. There he is, working the long night through, week after week, year after year and God alone knows what's coming out of it. Ah, I'm sure one day a really nice thing will happen for that man. One beautiful thing will happen.'

The sea and the harbour were gone, the light falling, and she saw only the dark road leading to the docks and the ships, and heard in her ears the tramp, tramp of those footsteps.

‘He works so hard—something should come to him—something. I pray it will. I could wish for some things. I could wish with every ounce of me own breath that something would come for him and make gay a morning. Poor Kilkey, the things I did against him years ago—and never a word. The faithfulness of the creature, coming to me, week after week. Sometimes it made me want to cry out—I wanted to crawl—I said to myself once, “He's too good. Too good.”'

She closed her eyes. ‘I wonder what he'll be like at the end of his days? I wonder.'

Under her she could feel a gentle rise and fall, she suddenly found herself listening intently to her husband's breathing.

‘Alive,' she said, ‘alive. You're lucky—this night thousands and thousands are sailing the world over, and thousands and thousands of women are waiting. Lord, have mercy on all sailors.'

She turned to look at him, she merely glimpsed his head's shape, and thought ‘that hideous mark down the back of his head is the last stroke the sea will ever have on him.' She put her hand on his head—she said, ‘It's wonderful—wonderful.'

‘I'll be up bright and early in the morning. We'll get dressed and I'll slip away down and make us something to eat, and I'll lay the fire against that man coming in out of a hard night. And I'll leave a little note on the table just saying we're away, and I'll say nothing more. We'll go and we'll come back—and we'll be happier for seeing him and we can rest content that he knows we have never forgotten him, and then the very next day I'll go and get them arrangements made final, and I'll come back and put away every bit of a thing that's belonging to us and I'll find the taxi or a cab maybe to take us down. Maybe all the way I'll be looking out and seeing all the places I know well, and perhaps I'll be considering many things.

‘He'll get well, I'm sure he will—the old creature cries against it all and I understand him for it. I think we'll be happy with my sister—the only sister I've now left and maybe we'll wake up one morning and forget all that ever was. We'll wake up to a new day. That will be the strength to him—and the last snatch of my arm which was always moving at something, always moving at something.

‘And we must be off to that St Sebastian's Place, too—I promised him I'd go to the Holy Communion that day in that little place we were married in. And we won't want to be seeing anybody or knowing anybody, but we'll go to the very first Mass when the chapel's hooded and silent. I never been to St Sebastian's since we left Hatfields. Father Moynihan will be there—he'll give us his blessing, for the going away—and I'll often think of him after we've gone—and I'll often see him in my mind moving about in all the clatter of streets on a Sunday morning, and the bell ringing to children to come there. I always liked that—I always will—I only wanted my family to be clean and good—and I never asked nothing else of them in all my days 'cept a generous heart towards one I dreamed of in the Holy Church. I thank God this minute for all them little things I had that made me heart happy, and I'll be thankful for them same things that are to come, and so will you, Denny, and so will you. Out of this place at long last, fifty years wanting it, and fifty years dreaming it, away to my own place.'

She drew the blanket over him and over herself and waited for sleep.

Chapter 8

It was for her the moment of triumph as she took her seat in the tram beside her husband. ‘At last,' she thought, ‘here he can't say anything—we're off. We're on our own together. All I hope is that Denny can stand the journey—but I feel he will—he aches to see Peter just as I do.'

She sat erect, staring straight before her, impatient, waiting for the tram to start. But the conductor was still standing in the street, still whistling his morning tune, still waiting for his vehicle to fill up with workmen going to the station. Her husband sat by her side. He was oddly dressed. Mr Kilkey's collar was hardly the right fit, and in the light she didn't like the pattern of the tie. She had wrapped a scarf round his neck, the blue velvet of his overcoat sat up stiffly as though supporting his thin neck. On the way to the tram he had twice asked her, in a timid sort of way, as though he had been visited by passing vanity, if the weal down the back of his head and neck showed up as bad as he thought it did, and, patting him on the shoulder she replied, ‘Not bad—but think of it as like a medal you've earned.'