The Furys (2 page)

‘Could you please tell me which hospital my son is in?' she asked. The man hurried back to his desk and wrote the address on a sheet of paper. ‘Anthony Fury, Riverside Hospital, West St., New York.' ‘Thank you,' the woman said and passed out. She did not hear the door close, but when she half turned her head she discovered to her surprise that it
was
closed. The girl led her through the inquiry office. Another door. ‘Thank you.' At last. She was in the corridor again. She stood there for some time, as though she were rooted to the very spot. Anthony fell from the mast. Good God! And she knew nothing. It was always the same. They never told you anything. Why, they hadn't even written to her from the office. She walked slowly down the corridor. At the end of it she stopped, and leaned against the wall. A weariness came over her. It had been so sudden. How strange it was too. She had only just looked up the movement of his ship in the
Journal of Commerce
that morning. And then the cable arrived. She now stood at the top of the stairs. Her eyes followed each stair until eventually they were focused upon the uniformed attendant at the bottom. What a frightful height she was. She drew back suddenly from where she stood. The man below appeared as a sort of insect to her. She turned round and half ran along the corridor. Where was the lift? She must go down that way. She simply could not face those stairs again. She was worried. The time was getting on. Before she knew where she was, Denny would be home. Yes, she could not waste time. A man and a girl came walking behind her. She moved aside to let them pass. Then she followed in their wake. They were going to the lift. Ah! There it was. One lost oneself entirely in buildings like this. She stepped into the lift. The attendant did not seem to notice her. She saw that he had one arm. The lift descended noiselessly. At the bottom she felt sick again. When she stepped out she looked up at the height from which she had come. It almost made her dizzy. At that moment doors opened and a stream of people came into the corridors. They hurried along towards the swing-doors. She tried to edge away from them, but they swept her on. Near the door itself she was carried away with this tide of hurrying bodies. After much confusion she found herself in the street again. She straightened her hat once more, brushed down her coat with a sweep of the hand, looked from right to left, then made to cross the road. She heard the clock of the near-by chapel strike. It was late.

She almost ran across the road and boarded a car. It started off with a jerk. She lay back in her seat. What a journey. What a place to have to go to. She turned her head round and looked out of the tram window. So that was the Shipping Company's office. That towering building on the waterfront. And her son worked for that company, as once her husband had done. As once, indeed, that other son had done too. She made the sign of the Cross on her forehead. Poor John! He had never gone to sea, but had worked with the shore gang. That tall white building. Somebody on the seat in front of her opened the window. The wind came sailing in. Mrs Fury held on to her hat, inwardly cursing the woman for opening the window. Now the tram had cleared the water-front. It was on the long Harbour Road. Not far to go now. The road in front was almost bare of traffic. The tram careered madly along. Mrs Fury's head lay up against the window, but she saw nothing. Her mind was closed. It had shut out the sights and sounds outside, the shops, the many people passing to and fro, the tram itself, it carried her body only for her spirit like her thoughts had suddenly taken flight and now hovered above the hospital where her son lay. She saw him lying in the bed, saw the changing expressions upon his face. The conductor called out ‘Terminus', but she did not hear. Her thoughts were three thousand miles away. Now she shook herself suddenly, exclaiming under her breath, ‘Good heavens, how late it is. The children are home from school.' She turned out of her seat and made a sudden dash on to the platform. ‘Stop,' she said. The tram pulled up with a screeching sound. She got off and crossed the road. Twenty minutes to get her husband's dinner ready. She hurried along. When she reached the house a telegraph boy was standing at the door. The next door neighbour popped her head out. But Mrs Fury did not see the woman. She took the wire from the boy, tore it open and began to read. ‘No answer,' she said to the boy, and went into the house.

2

As she passed upstairs, she glanced hurriedly at the silent figure of her father, sitting huddled in his chair. This high-backed chair stood on the right-hand side of the kitchen grate. Wound twice round the chair was a leather belt. Mrs Fury never left the house without strapping her father in his chair. It was ‘father's' chair, and he himself had made it with his own hands. It had come over from Ireland with him eight years previously. The woman stood at the bedroom door, listening. The low murmurous noises that reached her ears came from beneath the kitchen grate. She must hurry down and take away the tin blower from the fire. She looked at herself in the glass, then suddenly turned away and began to change into her house clothes, a blue blouse and black skirt. As she drew off her long dress the telegram fell out from her dress-body. She had forgotten all about it. She sat down on the bed and looked at the message. When she read it her face grew pale. She put her blue blouse on and once more stuffed the telegram into it. The envelope she tore into shreds, stamping upon it. Her demeanour changed. She walked up and down the room, there was a sort of aimlessness in these agitated circlings of the bedroom. At that moment the clock downstairs struck. ‘Oh!' she exclaimed, and hurried below to the back kitchen. As she went down the stairs she arranged her hair more tidily. She passed a hand across her face as she entered the kitchen. She put the kettle on the gas-stove, then busied herself with various pots and pans. She laid the kitchen table. She looked at the clock. A quarter to one. From kitchen to back kitchen she hurried, never once glancing at the silent figure cooped in his chair. Suddenly she stopped, gripping the table top with her two hands. Her expression changed. She felt a peculiar sickness at the pit of her stomach. She sat down on the sofa and lay back. The figure in the chair opposite did not move. Slowly Mrs Fury raised her head until her eyes were on a level with her father's shoulders. Then she leaned forward and exclaimed – ‘Father!' Not a muscle of Mr Mangan's face moved. It seemed the word had not penetrated to his brain as yet. It was such a long time since he had heard the word ‘Father'. Mrs Fury rose from the sofa and crossed over to him. She put a hand under the man's chin, and raised his face. There seemed no light of recognition in those features, the face was expressionless. Once more she said – ‘Father.' How useless he seemed. How old. Her two hands now rested on the belt. After a while she unbuckled it and took it away, folding it up and flinging it into the lower kitchen cupboard. As she knelt down in front of him her hair unloosened itself again, falling across her shoulders. Suddenly she rose to her feet and began to walk up and down the kitchen, her pacings, as in the room above, wild and aimless. Once more she looked at the clock. Almost one. He would be in any moment now. She walked round and round, her head held high in the air, one hand clutching at her blouse. These restless pacings drove her to the window. She drew the curtains aside and stared into the street. The clock struck. Strange! How late her husband was today. It was raining heavily. She went to the sofa and sat down again. Mr Mangan's head had lowered itself, the chin resting upon the waistcoat, covered with grease spots. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. She called again, ‘Father, Father.' The same silence as before. She sprang from the sofa, rushed across the kitchen.

‘Peter's coming home,' she cried, and struck Mr Mangan on the knee with her clenched fist. ‘Peter's coming home.' She went back to the sofa again, and commenced drumming with her fingers on its mahogany back. ‘Yes, he's coming home.' The old man in the chair gave a sort of grunt, but did not move. Mrs Fury knelt in front of him once more, staring into the blue eyes. Yes, this was her father. And he had been sitting in that chair for years. They had hardly spoken to each other. He was now eighty-two years of age. The head moved slightly so that the whole face was thrown into the light. She could study every line and wrinkle of that wizened face. It was like a mask. She took a large red handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the old man's nose, turning away her head as she did so. She leaned over and whispered into his ear. ‘Father.' What a time he had sat in that high chair. Ages, it seemed to her. Mr Mangan was dumb. The chair appeared to have acted upon him as a sort of drug. She smiled now. Calling him father, after that long silence. Again she thought, ‘How old and useless he is.' That corner was his world. He had never strayed from it, excepting when in imagination he caught the Belfast boat. One time the Belfast boat had occupied a significant place in his life. Now, like other things, it had faded out as the years spun out their journey-work.

Once a week the old man went out. Each Friday the woman helped him down to the little Post Office at the bottom of the street. There he drew his old age pension, his daughter holding his trembling hand whilst he made the all-important X on the form. After pocketing this money she helped him back to the house. Then he would collapse into the chair. Going for his pension was indeed a great adventure for old Mr Mangan. But the chair was his prison. If his daughter maintained a sort of stubborn silence with him, her husband Dennis made it complete. Dennis Fury never spoke to his father-in-law. To him the old man had long since passed that stage. He was out of the world altogether. He was just something stuck in the corner, as much a part of the house as the chimney-corner in which he sat. Anthony Mangan was really dead. There was only this aged figure known as ‘him'. This figure that sat in the corner through winter and summer, against the blazing fire which hardly ever went out. They carried him to bed and carried him down again. His daughter fed him. Sometimes as she held the slop to his mouth she would wonder if it was really her own father. The years seemed to have done something far more than their journey-work. One time it had been Anthony here and Anthony there with Mr Fury, whilst his wife invariably addressed him as ‘Dad', but that was so long ago. After a time speech stopped. He was a fixture. The chair held him. The great black high-backed chair whose stout legs gripped the red-tiled floor so securely. Mrs Fury still kept her eyes upon her father's face. Perhaps she should not have called him by name. She ought to have shouted, ‘Hey! Peter's coming home.' She began arranging her hair and smoothing down her blouse as she stared at him. ‘Peter's coming home,' she screamed, jumped to her feet and ran upstairs. She sat down on the bed and burst into tears. Imagine. To have stood there like that, staring at him, that old mysterious man, her own father, that helpless figure, and to have said that. ‘Peter's coming home.' Good God! As she sat there sobbing she heard the old man begin to cough. She ran downstairs. Yes. He was coughing and choking. She rushed to the chair and put her strong arms about him, and sat him up. He hung a dead weight in her arms. His eyes were partly closed. The woman held his head back. He had had these bouts before. He would soon get over it. How heavy he was. She bent her head and whispered into his ear, ‘Peter's coming home.' But there was no response. She pulled the big handkerchief from her pocket once more. The man's nose was running water again. There were times when she wished this old man out of sight and mind, but always her feeling ran counter to her economic position. This figure in the chair was helpless, he was a nuisance, but whilst he sat there he remained for her a sort of gilt-edged security, and a security that could not go overboard at the behest of her feelings. The old man jerked suddenly and she sat him down again. That bout was over, thank heavens. But it was useless to stand there any longer, telling him that his grandson was coming home. She made him comfortable and went away into the back kitchen. It was nearly seven years now since she had seen Peter. Her father would never know him, nor Peter his grand-dad. Seven years, she said to herself. It seemed more like seventy. She put her head through the open door. Lord! Denny was late. Five past one. She became obsessed with the time, with the helplessness of her father, by the thoughts of her son in New York, by the shock of the telegram from her sister in Cork. Her whole face seemed suddenly illuminated by this agitation. She could not conceal it any longer. Why hadn't she cried out? Why hadn't she fainted? No. She had remained calm in face of the news. She had even overcome that physical disgust she experienced whenever occasion demanded attendance upon the old man. At that moment a key was heard being turned in the lock. ‘Denny!' she exclaimed, and hurried to open the door for him. But the man was already in the hall. ‘Oh, Denny,' she said. ‘Peter's failed.'

‘For Christ's sake!' replied the man and pushed past her. He went upstairs to his room. Mrs Fury watched his figure slowly mount the stairs. Then she went into the kitchen. Her father was coughing again. ‘Heavens!' she cried and ran to him.

3

Mr Fury was standing by the window in the bedroom. He was a man of medium height, a little stooped about the shoulders. His hair was closely cropped, iron-grey in colour, that somehow contrasted strongly with his ashen-like face, the result of thirty years spent below the decks of ships. His face was covered with oil smears. His dungaree overalls were similarly splashed with grease. He was looking out of the window. The high wall opposite obstructed one's vision, but the man appeared to be gazing at something beyond this wall. There were a number of children playing in the yard below. He could hear a barrel-organ grinding out its raucous tune. Somewhere a dog barked ceaselessly. His head leaned a little to one side as though he were meditating about something. There was a tiredness in the blue eyes that seemed only to stare into the empty air. He scratched his head. Funny. He had walked up the street and put his key in the lock and opened the door. Then the voice in the hall had cried out, ‘Peter's failed.' It was a harsh rasping voice. He could still hear that voice. The words rang in his ears. ‘He's failed, Denny. He's failed.' Suddenly he laughed and aimed a kick at the leg of the table. He could hear his wife moving about in the back kitchen. He yawned, stretched his arms in the air, then let them fall heavily to his side. He was tired. He didn't want to go downstairs at all. A voice saying, ‘He's failed,' appeared to have acted upon him with all the potency of some powerful drug. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He noticed that the bed-clothes were ruffled. ‘She must have been up here just before I came in,' he was saying to himself. Outside the barrel-organ suddenly changed its tune. The wild cries of the children continued, but the dog had ceased to bark. Then a voice called up the stairs: