An End and a Beginning (25 page)

She paused a moment before resuming the walk, and then she said very quietly, “And now, the only thing I can clearly remember is the simplicity of my decision. This way, dear,” she said, pulling on his arm.

Ahead they suddenly saw the long white ribbon of road. “We'll soon be there,” she said.

Looking at her he knew that in spite of the house, its vastness and emptiness and utter silence, its lifeless rooms, she was enjoying this. He had listened to her periodic cries of delight as she recognised some familiar landmark, he had watched her forever pointing out this and that object. Something forgotten, something remembered, something to surprise her. And he listened and kept silence. The air about him beat with words. Yes, she was loving this, after a long, long absence. The look of the land, the feel of the country, her own indestructible home. Yes, she had roots. The words tossed about him, struck at his ear. The house, the woods, the fields, the estate, the neglect, the dead land. This spinney, that stream, those yews, that row of elms, those weather-beaten, mellowed bricks, a blue hill to their left, and a dark cluster of heavy oak and ash. The stables, the summer house, the curved and hidden lanes. And he listened, and was yet far away, as far back as turbulent Gelton, in a long street of which city he seemed to see a lone woman walking, and hear his own quick steps behind her. “Maureen! Good Lord! At last. I've found you. How wonderful!”

“You're not listening to a word I'm saying,” Sheila said, gently scolding.

“I am, I am, I really was,” he said, and they climbed the last few steps and landed on the deserted road. Above their heads the skies suddenly darkened.

“Isn't it beautiful, Peter,” she asked, “isn't it? Just look at the view.”

He put an arm around her as they stood looking back into the valley.

“It is beautiful, and so quiet, so peaceful. I recognise this road, I've walked miles and miles and miles since I arrived. There's a monastery somewhere about. Franciscans.”

“I know,” she said.

“Over there,” he said, pointing south.

“That's right. We used to supply them from the farm when I was a girl.”

They listened to the rushing waters of a river. He saw ducks in a pond, a roadman bent and concentrated to his task, knee-deep in coarse grass. From the middle of the bridge a dog barked defiantly as they moved towards it. Some distance off they heard the baying of hounds.

“There's the Duggans' house, the little pub,” she said. “We'll call there and you can have a drink.”

They stopped at the bridge, leaned over, watched the swirling waters.

“That was the day I first met Desmond,” she said. “It seems so strange now, looking back to that time.” She drew back quickly. “Oh! Watching that water made me feel quite dizzy. Let's go on, Peter. I wonder if the same people have this place. It belonged to Father once, the cottage, the holding, they were nice people, the Duggans.”

He watched smoke curl up from the chimney, noted the white-washed walls, the blue-curtained windows. “A snug place,” he said.

“Shall I tell you about it, Peter?”

“Tell what?”

“It doesn't matter. No, it doesn't matter.”

“Do tell, do tell, I'm listening, dear, what happened?”

“Not now,” she said, opening the door, walking in, finding the tiny room, seeing a fire, a plain deal table, two chairs, a clock. She sat down. There was an old rusty bell at her hand. She rang it, and waited.

“Good morning,” the woman said.

A medium-sized, wiry woman, her skin heavily tanned, her arms bare to the shoulder, a blouse a little open, her black hair untidy.

“Some whisky, please.”

The woman stared. “If you'll excuse me, ma'm, but aren't you the Miss Downey that was?”

“I am,” and they exchanged their civil smiles. “Mrs. Duggan?” asked Sheila.

“Larkin, Miss, Mrs. Larkin. Old Duggan and his family have gone this seven years.”

“Indeed. Bring the whisky.”

“Yes, ma'm.”

“What a cosy little room,” he said, leaning back against the wall, feeling suddenly dry, badly wanting the whisky. The door opened. The woman put two glasses on the table.

“Leave the bottle, Mrs. Larkin.”

“Very well, ma'm.”

“And thank you.”

It was the signal to go and she went. The door closed behind her.

“Now have your drink, Peter,” she said.

“And you?”

She shook her head, smiled as he filled his glass. “Good luck to you in everything you will do in the future,” she said.

“
Please,
” he said.

“All right,” and she took a tiny sip from his glass.

“Tell me about it, Sheila, do tell. I often wondered where it began, how it happened. Mother did. We all did.”

She leaned over the table, her fingers on the bottle, turning it round and round, as though she were waiting for the moment to send her voyaging back to the far-off day.

“You'll think I was quite mad, I know you will. I was, but I didn't care. It's the way it happened.” He held his glass in his hand, his head resting on his breast, he listened with half-shut eyes. “I often,
often
thought about it, all that time ago,” he reflected.

“A lovely sunny afternoon it was. I was walking along the seashore. Your brother was at one end of it and I was at the other. I walked slowly along the tideline. I always liked doing it, looking for what the sea cast up, and I was so fond of shells, every kind of shell. With my head bent I never realized that he was walking, too, in my direction. And then quite suddenly Desmond walked past me. I turned to look at him. I can't describe to you the thrill I felt when I saw him. Not in my whole life had I ever seen anybody like him. So tall a man, so handsome, you'd never dream he came out of any city on earth, and at first I found myself exclaiming, ‘gypsy, perhaps,' but he wasn't of course. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. I felt I had to. And before either of us quite realized it, we were standing side by side, staring out at the sea. He towered over me. He gave me a curious sensation, a feeling of real physical power. There was something so dynamic about him, so resolute, certain, determined, as though in the world about him there were no questions to ask, and none to answer. He was different to any man I had ever seen. It was then that I fell in love with him. We sat down together on a rock. We talked. He told me who he was, all about himself, where he had been, where he came from. And it all seemed so easy, so casual, so natural, and I was listening to him as though I'd known him all my life. Even now I can see the expression on his face, feel it, as I sat there listening. He talked and talked. I felt miles away from my home, miles and miles, and miles away. Then I forgot it altogether, forgot the time, the day, the date. I just sat on, and he talked and laughed, and I did the same. Somehow we were never once like strangers. I'd met lots of men, some as handsome as Desmond, but none had ever given me the thrill your brother gave me. It was strange, and it
was
exciting. I was only a girl then, and I used to giggle at the men who hung round my heels. But not Desmond. You can't imagine the feelings I had that afternoon. And not once did I ever ask myself what I was doing sitting there, talking to this stranger. But there was something about him that made me sit on. I saw something real and shining in him. I sat there watching him fling pebbles into the sea. I wasn't afraid of anything, and I don't think he was either. But I was in love with him, I knew that in an instant. And then in a moment I was doing the talking. I told him all about myself, my home, my parents, my relatives, my work, my life, their lives. I left nothing out. He listened, he stopped flinging stones to the sea, just sat there with clasped hands, said never a word. He turned and looked hard at me, then smiled. He told me he was on holiday, had been in Cork nearly a week, he was staying with a relative. I was so carried away that afternoon, I was so mad, that when at last he got up to go, I got up, too, and I walked with him a whole mile of the beach, we never stopped, we went right through the town, two utter strangers. We went to a restaurant and had tea there. That night he was returning to England, and that night I went back with him, just with the clothes I stood in, hatless, and I felt strangely happy. I didn't care about a single thing on earth, I only wanted to go with him.”

She paused, stared at the man opposite her, and for a few moments seemed unable to speak. And then she said very quietly, “That's the first time I've ever told anybody about that extraordinary day. So now you know, and that's how Desmond and I came together, and only a few weeks after that I was in a strange city, and I married him. I walked right out of my own life.”

Peter drank his whisky, added more to the glass. It had no meaning for him. Dead words, falling like stones from her mouth.

“And now something's come to an end,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You've walked out of his life? Is that it, Sheila? Do tell me.”

“I've left him,” she said.

“Left him? Left Desmond? You mean that, truly?”

He couldn't wait for the answer. He felt like a doctor, probing, opening up the wound. “Is this true?”

He had the knife in, he was ready to plunge.

“Quite true,” she said. “I left him a week ago. It was over long before that, really. It was no use pretending.”

“You mean it's finished, you'll never go back?”

There was an eagerness behind his words, and she felt the sudden pressure of his fingers on her arm.

“I'm just glad to be home again,” she said. “And I don't want to talk about it any more, Peter. Please.”

“How bloody selfish I am,” he thought, “licking my own little wound.”

“I'm sorry about it, Sheila. I really am, and I mean it. It's terrible. Yet one time I would have laughed, shouted about it, been glad. I always hated him, was jealous of him. But not now, no, not now. Somehow Desmond was never one of us, and Mother always said he was completely lacking in feeling. What will you do now?”

“Nothing—I don't know—nothing,” she said.

Her eyes suddenly moistened, he could not look at her.

“When I was a girl I used to despise this place. I hated the life in it, the dull, monotonous round, the waste of it, the sheer greed. And I used to think, ‘how aimless, how stupid'. But now the life I thought I despised seems to me no more useless than the one I lived with him. He may follow after me, he's an insanely jealous man, but I don't think it will make much difference. I've had enough of
that
. He's on a kind of journey himself now, and it seems just as crazy as the one I took with him that summer afternoon. Nothing seems to have grown in my life, and now it's too late. It was time to break it up, time to go. And here I am. Here I stay. I'll resume my life here. I'll do the best I can with it.”

“Here, Sheila,” he said, handing her his handkerchief.

“I'll find lots to do here,” she continued. “I can bury myself in something. I did it with Desmond once, and in the beginning it seemed wonderful. I really mean that, Peter. It was an adventure for me. I had the feeling that something was growing round me, it was something new, something exciting, it was bound to be, for nothing had ever grown here. Money grew here, appetites, little else. When I left Ralston Park a week ago I felt I was really coming home. I left a note on his desk. That desk, that is his real home, and throne, and castle, and bed. He lives at the desk. He'll be able to hear his own heart beating as he sits there, and it'll never seem strange or even sad to him that another is not beating beside it.”

She looked up, tried to smile, smiled, and returned his handkerchief.

“That's why I came home,” she said. “I think we had better go, Peter.”

The bell rang, and the woman came. She pressed his hand, whispered, “No. Keep your money, dear. Keep it.”

She paid for the whisky, and they both got up and left the house.

7

The first thing Miss Fetch should have noticed when going into the room was that her clock had stopped. The familiar tick was absent, as close as a heartbeat, like another person in the room, but she hadn't noticed it. Entering, she did a rather curious thing. On a wooden bracket affixed to the wall, just behind the fireplace, lay her little altar. On it stood a small figure of the Virgin, before it a tiny vase of flowers; in the summer fresh; in the winter artificial, but always the vase was full. It was a part of her day, a part of life. Before this statue lay a saucer in which stood the small nightlight. She closed the door after her, walked across to the altar, and blew out the nightlight, and its fifteen years of silent devotion. It had never before gone out, and like the clock, it had never been allowed to. The living eye of light that had shone so eternally in her room now gave off the last of its waxen fumes. Often she had knelt before this altar, knelt and prayed. Sometimes she saw the floating light as the tiniest ship, gently moving in its saucer of sea. Above it the face of the Virgin looked down, eternally patient, eternally watching. Now the face and the light drowned in the darkest corner. There was a glow from the fire before which she sat, and from time to time she applied a vigorous poker to the coals. Had the light shone as before it would have caught her greying hair, and had she knelt there, it would have trapped her face, and given more substance to the extraordinary expression that now rested upon it. Miss Fetch felt bewildered, felt restless, felt terribly uncertain. But then it had been a rather unusual day, perhaps she might have said an extraordinary day. So much had happened. So much had not.

For the first time in years her most faithful friend the postman had not called. They had not adjourned to the tiny smokeroom and sampled the still magnificent remainder of the Downey refreshments. This had been a singular blow. She had not been able to supply him with his goodly dose, and he for his part had not been able to give her what she required. It was a defeat. The postman was a part of Miss Fetch's life. She exulted in her anticipations, glorified in her satisfaction. Later there were remorseful moments, hoverings of conscience, which, like dark clouds, scattered after her act of contrition. This morning Michael Cullen would have been somewhat surprised, and a trifle disappointed. For Miss Fetch it was a defeat, and she would not forget it. That was only the beginning.