Winter Song (8 page)

Father Moynihan went out. Desmond sat listening to him talking at the telephone, and then as for the first time he realized how terribly true it was. He hadn't believed it at first. The journey had simply been a dream journey. It seemed impossible to believe. Lost for a year.

‘Poor old dad,' he said, ‘poor old dad! Well, I'll do my best for them. I know I've been lousy. I know I've been ashamed of them—yes, I know that well enough—but I'll try to make their remaining days happy. They have tried hard for us. If
only
mother hadn't been bitten by that priest idea, and nothing came of it, except one humiliation after another. That awful bloody moneylender—what was her name?—it doesn't matter anyhow—it's long ago, but it was awful, and now the half-priest is sitting somewhere where he never expected to be sitting. Mother's beautiful dream. Yes. She did play ducks and drakes with dad. The way she found that savings book and then used his poor little savings to keep the lad at the seminary which he hated. Yes,
that's
what I hate about this religion. This mad idea that every family has of producing a priest. I can see all the roads mother travelled for nothing. It's not much use having a heart and being stupid with it. I am afraid that there are some things that will always lie at mother's door. The way she married off Maureen to that poor simple mutt, Kilkey, and why? Just because he was a good Catholic. Still I must say he showed guts being a conchie. Yes, by God—she even made
him
pay for her grand idea. Even his miserable bit of furniture got involved. I sometimes think that my mother was mad.'

Suddenly he saw her again—he remembered the quiet room, the passing nuns, the scentified air, the quaint crucifix, the statues, that's where she always belonged. He could hear her talking.

‘I would not see your wife if you brought her here. Nor your son if you had one. They're a bad lot, those Downeys. I know them all, and you'll see they'll end in the gutter. They one and all turned their backs on their beautiful religion, and you disgraced me by going off with her. All she wanted from you was the crown of your manhood. Nothing more.'

He remembered that, the other things faded away, seemed unimportant, he remembered scraps of conversation—odd phrases—the casual remark.

‘If your poor father were alive to-day, I would not be depending on the likes of you.'

‘I know it is you who is keeping me here—paying for everything and I have to accept it. One time I could depend on your father. Oh yes, I know I treated him badly. I often lied to him—there were times when he infuriated me.'

‘When?' he had asked.

‘The way he went on. So content. His old pigeon-breast sticking out with his pride in his job, but no ambitions, none at all, and too fond of his glass, too many feelings at the wrong moment, and none at all when he should have shown them. Your father might have been born sightless in those first years after he brought me here, so little did he see—so little did he know—he was always away out of it, hidden in his ships, happy with his mates. I never begrudged him that but he knew little of my struggles.…'

And so on and so on.

‘True,' he thought, ‘she had her struggles. So did thousands. I've seen it all. That's why I got away out of it, out of that awful house, that terrible bloody house that simply choked you. And out of this hole called Gelton. Yes, I've seen as much as she ever saw. The way she wanted to climb—and didn't know—couldn't ever be told, that you can't climb on nothing. There's got to be something to climb from. Poor mother,' and he suddenly found himself laughing. ‘One night I dreamed about her. I dreamed she was Napoleon. She did look so funny to me with her old petticoats flying about her. I'll never forget that boyhood dream I had. Yes, I've got on. I got myself out of the rut, with every kind of hand trying to pull me back. But they missed, and now I'm out. I've got where I wanted and there are still other places to go. I'm only thirty-two and I know what I want. That's why I fought my way to London. What do I want
now
?'

At that moment Father Moynihan returned. He sat down. He lighted his pipe.

‘In half an hour I will take you to your father.'

‘Thank you,' Desmond said.

‘He has slept most of the day. The rest has done him good. I ought to tell you that he quite lost his memory. Nobody knew who he was. I got quite a deal of information from two men who travelled back with him. They were with him in hospital at Bahia. All their ships had been sunk under them. Your father was found clinging to a spar, and clinging to him a boy—but
he
was dead. He was flung into the sea again only four days later—the South Atlantic had a good many sinkings—a very dangerous place. You will find him very much altered. He reminded me of a baby of sorts. He seems to have grown even smaller—he was never very big. Even now there is a gap in his mind; for instance, at two o'clock yesterday afternoon he knew me, at six in the evening he asked me who I was. His nights are disturbing—he has nightmares. God knows he travels to strange places when he has them. That first night Father Twomey and Delahane had a difficult time with him. So far he knows the worst. I have told him. It was a very distressing moment. He has asked after you all. I know he will be very pleased to see you. Provided all the arrangements work out right, you would, I hope, take your parents across the channel?'

‘Yes,' Desmond replied, but wasn't sure—he thought their going home an excellent idea, but he hadn't been expecting this. He had thought of the mug, the old chap with the bald head, the pious dodderer. He had always come in handy in these awkward situations, and Desmond Fury had conjured up a good many of them in his lifetime.

‘I'll just get my cape and my hat,' Father Moynihan said, and immediately left the room. For the first time the visitor looked round, studying his surroundings. He remembered this room, he had come here often as a boy. There they were, all the familiar objects, the oleograph of the Sacred Heart, the wooden crucifix over the fireplace, and there on the wall near the window the large picture of the hunt, the hounds in full cry, the red-coated huntsmen. How he had stared at that, fascinated—a world that existed thousands of miles away—and here the housekeeper's sewing machine and on it the prayer book, the pamphlets, the Catholic magazines.

Father Moynihan came in. ‘Ready?'

‘I'm ready. Thank you for the supper.'

The priest gave no reply but made for the door and Desmond followed him out.

Walking the dark, wind-torn streets a flood of memories rushed over the visitor.

‘Is it very far? I've forgotten my way around Gelton,' he said.

‘We catch a tram on the corner. You'll have to walk back. Where are you staying?'

‘I'm at an hotel in the city.'

‘I could put you up.'

‘It doesn't matter, thank you. And thank you indeed for your kindness to my mother. I know you've been very good and will be to my father.'

‘It is part of my work.'

They walked on in silence. At the end of the road they boarded a tram, which rattled them towards the Bethel. When they arrived Delahane met them.

‘Father Twomey has retired,' he said. ‘He has had such a day, Father. Such a day.'

‘Can we go up?' asked the priest; he swung his hat in his hand.

‘Yes, I'll take you up. The old man slept most of the morning. He hasn't eaten very much—he talked quite a lot this afternoon, and then fell off asleep again. He has these bouts, feverish, I'd call them, when he spills out all sorts of things, and no two phrases connect. He's all over the place. But better, oh yes, the colour's coming back.…'

‘He never had any colour,' said Desmond, ‘he was always pale. Stokers are.'

‘Come,' said the priest.

The three men went upstairs. At the door Delahane was cautious.

‘You go in first Father and see him. If he is asleep I cannot allow him to be disturbed. If not, then this man—you are the son, I believe,' he glanced up at Desmond who nodded, ‘can go in. But prepare the old chap, prepare him.'

Father Moynihan went in. Desmond Fury stood there, listening.

‘A miracle, that's what I think.' Delahane said.

‘Father Moynihan says he's disfigured—is that true?'

‘Well, yes and no, ah. sure I don't think it's noticeable really, being at the back of him and not the front of him. But what's that matter if the creature's alive?'

‘True enough.'

The door opened. Father Moynihan said softly ‘Please come in. Thank you, Delahane.'

Desmond Fury went in. At first he was a little frightened approaching the bed.

‘Dennis Fury,' whispered the priest ‘your son has come. Do you understand? Your son has come to see you. He is here. Look at me now.'

The old man looked up, Father Moynihan thought for a moment that the man was trying to smile—then he said, patting the sick man's hand—‘I'll leave you now.'

He walked away, the door closed, he left Desmond Fury standing alone in the room looking down at what the sea had flung back. Desmond heard the door close, he stood listening, he waited, he wanted the feeling of being alone, suddenly he knelt down at the bed.

‘God help you,' he said, ‘it's me. It's Desmond, father.'

He saw the hand moving, feeling blindly for something, he gripped and held it.

‘Poor dad,' he said.

A lump came into his throat, he could not speak, he looked at his father's head, the cruel stripe, as of some powerful claw that had torn downwards, with speed, with fury, from head to shoulder.

‘My God Almighty, I don't know who this is. I suppose it is my father. But mother to see this—she'll never know him. The sea has had him too long, you can see. My God, you can see, it has struck and struck and smashed, and torn his life out of him.'

The man in the bed was looking at him now, out of tired eyes, the lips began to move.

Desmond Fury surprised himself, he lay his head on the white, hard hands, and wept.

‘It's me, dad, Desmond.'

The sound seemed to come from the depths, a half-hiss, the words came: ‘I know.'

‘I'm terribly sorry, dad, and I'm glad. Ah, you've had your little bit, but no more. By Christ, no more for you. Can you see me, father, can you hear me?'

‘Your mother never came, who always came.'

‘She will.'

‘Always she came. At night she would light that lamp, the little red one, the night I'd be coming from the sea. Do you remember that?'

Desmond bowed his head.

‘She's sold me up, your mother's sold me up. I says to the priest to-day “I want to go home,” and he says “There isn't any,” and so here I am, and she never came to see me, and I've been listening here all the day. They think I'm sleeping when I'm not. They thought I was drunk the first night they brought me here. I was in the sea that time and they didn't know.'

‘Try not to excite yourself, dad,' Desmond said, ‘please try; sure mother will come.'

‘All that wide emptiness I come to—why did you let her do it?'

‘Ah, why, she thought you were gone and well gone, that's all. The creature thought that and nothing else.'

He looked away from the bed, ‘This isn't a man at all,' he thought, ‘that fellow's right, he's grown quite small,' that fellow being the parish priest, Richard Moynihan, and since if he could not call him Father, he could call him Moynihan.

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm here. It's O.K. I'm here.'

‘Can you lift me up a little,' his father said.

He raised him, backed the pillows up behind. ‘No weight, a shell, poor old dad.'

The tom-tom began to beat again in the old man's head. ‘Your mother never came. It hurt me. She always met me off the ship.'

‘She'll come—never fear,' he said.

‘She broke everything up.'

But he had no answer to that.

‘It is Desmond,' he said.

‘Yes, yes, it's me,' he leaned over his father. ‘Would you like me to get you anything?'

‘A drink.'

He gave him water. ‘The doctor says you should go into hospital.'

‘No.'

And nothing seemed more definite to Desmond Fury than that
NO
.

‘But you'll be looked after there dad, they'll get you better.'

‘Sometimes I'm in the sea and sometimes I'm not, but when I'm in the sea it's all flames, and the water gets in my ears, I can't hear what people are saying. Poor little boy, only a little boy he was.'

‘Try not to excite yourself—try not to excite yourself. Now you ought to have a nice sleeping draught, you'll get a good night's sleep, you won't dream a thing, you'll feel fine and grand in the morning.'

‘What's the matter with her?' the old man said, he fixed his eye on his son.

‘Who?'

‘Your mother. Doing that. Doing what she did. My home what I built up.'

The same question, how could he answer that?

‘Mother will tell you.'

‘She's not ill or anything …?'

‘No, but she's a bit tired like you, and no more than that. I know she cried herself to sleep many a night, after you were away that time.'

‘I can't go away any more. They told me I'm finished.' The voice was shaky, the effort suddenly made him cough and splutter.

‘I know that.'

Dennis Fury raised his hand and he caught hold of his son's chin, he held it, he said ‘You were fair cruel to her once.'

‘I know.'

‘I'm glad you know. You can go away. Now go away, leave me alone. Go on, go on, leave me alone,' with some effort he pushed at his son's face.

Desmond felt shame rise and choke him now. He got up, he said awkwardly: ‘I'll come back. Let me fix the pillows flat for you, dad.'