The Secret Journey (86 page)

‘Dick! I'm hungry. Couldn't we get something to eat? It's a long way.'

He put his hand in his pocket. ‘Here, get me a meat pie out of it.'

But just as he handed her the shilling, the whistle blew and the train started. It was too late. They would travel hungry to Blacksea, which was the first stop, for this was an express train. Mr. Slye fell asleep and later he filled the compartment with his snores. Maureen examined him minutely. Occasionally she looked down at the child. The train rattled on.

They were off, they were moving, going somewhere. And Dick was there. She loved Dick. But now something happened inside her, a feeling rose up, smothered her. She had been cruel to her mother. To Joe. She couldn't stand it any longer. That was what had made her sad the whole day. She felt isolated, cut off from them all. When she thought of Peter in prison she couldn't hold back any longer. She got up and left the carriage. Somehow it seemed wrong to cry in front of Slye Esquire, in front of Dick who snored, and on whose face there had now settled an expression of supreme contentment. No! She must hide. She shut the door behind her, quite forgetting she had left the sleeping child on the seat. Then she locked the lavatory door. She sat down and wept.

II

The man emerged from a small and narrow street, bricks festering space, and he left behind him the sour, acrid smell of stables. He was in the road. Its face shone. It was an endless road. Pavements and roadway carried a grease-film, water-puddles, the burden of debris from the life of that day. To right and left towering warehouses and sheds shrugged stone shoulders, and the dim lights below only increased their toppling height. He walked along at a steady pace, his hands clasped behind his back. His footsteps rang out on the deserted pavement. Goods-yard gates lay open, the yards gaped. In dark corners resting loco engines hissed, and distantly a light engine chugged over points. He passed through patches of dim light, then darkness. The road grew longer as he walked. Sometimes it was shaped for him when the moon appeared from behind a bank of cloud. Sometimes it was shapeless.

He looked neither to right nor left, but pushed ahead, his destination known, seeing in the dim distance the tiny red light that hung over the ship's gangway. He crossed the road. He passed gate after gate outside of which a caped figure stood, or paced to and fro beside his wooden hut. The man passed a ‘good night' to one of these policemen, and at the same time he saw from the clock tower that it was getting on for nine o'clock. He increased his pace. ‘Didn't know it was so late as that,' he said aloud into the deserted road.

He was a man of medium height, well built, with powerful shoulders. He wore a reefer jacket and a jersey, a big peaked cap, and a pair of black serge trousers. The next dock-gate he passed told him that he would reach his ship on time. At the same time a figure emerged into the road, stepped close to him. They recognized each other and the newcomer called out, ‘'Night, Kilkey. What ship?'

Mr. Kilkey swung round as he passed. ‘
Fortunia,
' he called out. ‘'Night, Jack.'

They went on, one going towards the city, the other away from it.

‘A few minutes in hand,' reflected Mr. Kilkey, and his pace became leisurely. To any casual observer it might seem that the man was indulging in one of those nightly prowls, not uncommon on the dock roads of Gelton. But Mr. Kilkey was not interested in such phenomena. He wasn't interested in the road, the buildings, the noises, the shadows and shapes. They appeared before, and filled eyes already exhausted by them. The road, the look of the road, and the feel of it, the very aura that hung over it was nothing more than history. He wasn't curious about it. The night face of Gelton was just something to be walked over. The eyes that looked straight ahead now saw the red light grow less dim. He was going to his work, but he did not think of his work. He passed through a drab world made fantastic in the moonlight. But it meant nothing. His mind was on other things. The home he had just left. He thought of his wife who had left him, and of the child but lately gone. ‘Sometimes I get tired of all this,' he reflected. Not the world, not his work, not even the war that raged. These things neither concerned nor shaped his existence. It was ‘the accident.' He always called it the accident. Mr. Kilkey liked his home, but not at present. Something had invaded it, something like the cold blast of winter.
She
had gone, and now the child was gone too. The temperature of living had gone down. Work was different, living was different.

‘Just two years now. I wonder what'll become of Maureen, anyhow?' He did wonder. Young and foolish. Didn't know when she had a good home. Suddenly he stopped dead and drew back, as a huge lorry came out of a gateway. It was packed high with bales of wool, the wheels struck sparks, the horses' hooves struck sparks, and he heard the whip crack over their flanks as they made a super-effort and finally reached the level of the roadway. Mr. Kilkey went on. One or two men passed him by, passed unseeing, and he cried: ‘'Night, mate,' to which they replied, ‘'Night.'

Through the next dock-gate Joseph Kilkey disappeared. Great steel sheds, their open doors like mouths, loomed up as he went on. At the end of the line of sheds he turned to the left and came to the quay. Now he could see his ship, an enormous shape, masts spearing skywards, hull lost to view, and the red light over the gangway revealed a group of three men leaning over the bulwarks, in conversation. He stepped over the hawsers of stout rope, could now see the derricks rising like appealing arms, and the great blocks reeved. From the funnel wisps of steam spouted and were swallowed up in the night air. He reached the gangway and ascended. When he reached the top a chorus of voices greeted him. He still had a few minutes to spare.

‘Hello, Joe!' cried one. ‘Thought you'd gone to France.'

‘Aye,' exclaimed another, ‘somebody told me you'd joined the Lancers.'

‘Did they? How funny!' said Mr. Kilkey, and he stood looking at the men. ‘Where's Malone?' he asked, and looked round the deck.

‘In the saloon. Asleep as usual, I think.'

‘Oh! I see,' replied Mr. Kilkey, and he went along the alleyway to the saloon. ‘Hey there, Malone,' he called in, ‘better stand by your winch.'

‘All right. The ship won't sink. Coming,' the man replied from within.

Mr. Kilkey then returned to the three men. They talked about the war. It was something you lived with, you couldn't ignore, everybody talked about it.

‘Just lately,' said Mr. Kilkey, leaning back against the bulkhead, ‘I've noticed one or two chaps have taken quite a liking to my job. And that makes me think they'd like to have it. Wouldn't you like to have it, Crilly?' he asked, turning and buttonholing his nearest man. ‘It's a good job, a responsible job. Say I was taken for the army to-morrow?'

‘But you never would, Kilkey. You wouldn't make a Lancer.'

‘Not talking about Lancers,' replied Mr. Kilkey.

‘And we can't now,' said Crilly, ‘there's the whistle.'

It blew and the men scattered. Mr. Kilkey went to number three hatch. He found the men already opening it up. ‘How do,' he said, and then helped them to remove the covers which they piled neatly on the starboard side of the ship. Malone was already at the winch. Suddenly its loud rattle broke the silence.

‘All right there, Malone?' called Kilkey.

‘All set here.'

Mr. Kilkey got on to the platform, looked down into the'tween-decks. A cluster shone revealing men working below. They looked like insects in the cavernous depths of the ship. ‘All set below there,' he cried down, and they cried back, ‘All set here. Send down your slings.'

‘Right, Malone,' cried Kilkey, and the winch began to sing.

‘Stand by your falls there.'

‘Guide-rope man, over there.'

And at the same moment there was a low murmur from the shore crane. The first sling was loaded now, and Mr. Kilkey called out: ‘My gloves there.' The guide-rope man handed him a pair of stout leather gloves, jammed in the combings.

‘Coming up,' he said.

Mr. Kilkey put on the gloves, protectors against anthrax. He got a firm grip of the wood beneath his feet, bent forward a little, raised his right hand, crooked his forefinger. Work had begun. The sling rose. He made little circles in the air with his finger. ‘Heave! Steady, hold a bit. Steady there.'

The huge bundles of raw hides appeared out of the hold. Mr. Kilkey landed them on the platform, unbent the hook, cried: ‘Lower away there.' At the same time the shore crane began its song, and the big hook and chain came through the air, and finally to rest just above Mr. Kilkey's head. He bent on the load to this hook, cried: ‘Take her easy.' The load swung quaywards. Below a second sling was ready. ‘Heave away,' he cried, and his little finger began circling the air again.

He looked down into the depths, but he did not think of the depths, nor of the rising sling, the load of hides. He thought of his son Dermod. He wondered what he was like now, after all those months. Probably fast asleep in bed by this time, but where? He wished he knew. He thought of his landlady. ‘Mrs. Ditchley said I was a fool. Perhaps I am.'

Suddenly a hand gripped his trousers-leg, and a voice cautioned. ‘Look out, man. What's the matter with you? Another move forward and you'd be down that bloody hold, and that'd be the last of you, Joe Kilkey.'

Mr. Kilkey gave a little jump, swung round, said, ‘Hello, Taylor. Didn't see you.'

The huge sling was rising higher. The man laughed. ‘Why should you want to see me? Damn it, man, are you half asleep or what? You're standing on the edge of a nice long drop. Anything wrong?'

His concern made Kilkey laugh. ‘Wrong? No. Why? And I'm certainly not asleep.'

‘Perhaps not,' said Taylor, ‘but you were bloody near down that hold.' He let go the trousers-leg and walked away.

Mr. Kilkey cried: ‘Steady there.' The sling was out of the hold, swinging gently in the air. To Kilkey it was like the sudden rising of a mountain. ‘My God,' he said to himself, ‘I'll have to be more careful. Don't know what's the matter with me lately. Damned if I do. Can't get that kid out of my head at all. I hope there's nothing wrong with him.' He unbent the hook, bent the load to the shore crane. Cried: ‘Take her easy.'

Another sling was loaded below, a voice was crying, ‘Ready above there! Hey!'

Finally Joseph Kilkey woke up. He realized something. It shocked him. He was in the middle of his work, and he wasn't a bit interested in it any more. He was boss of the whole hatch and he stood there dreaming. The slings were actually rising faster than he could deal with them. Something was wrong. ‘It's this thinking about that kid,' he told himself. ‘Lately I've begun to get worried about him. I ought to do something about it. I will too, soon.'

The slings rose and fell, the winches rattled from stem to stern, the whole ship seemed to tremble beneath the energy of machines and men.

Now he stood well back on his platform, looked at the winchman, half in shadow.

‘Coming up,' he cried. ‘Steady she goes.'

But he could not get his son Dermod out of his mind. He had followed him all the way to work, along the greasy roads, down the dark quays, up the shaky gangway. He was on the hatch-top beside him, he was down the hold. He was everywhere. ‘Must do something about it to-morrow. Something tells me he's ill.'

‘Look out there, Kilkey,' cried the winchman.

‘I'm looking out, don't worry yourself,' replied Kilkey, and ducked his head as the chain of the travelling crane came past him.

The shaded lights of the cluster hung over his head; he stood within this circle of light, but beyond it he could not see. Two walls of banked-up darkness, faint sounds in the distance, churning water, dripping pipes, and somewhere away down the river a faint voice shouting, ‘Hoy there.' The slings rose and fell, the winches rattled, it became the rhythm of the night's work, of the ship, and it absorbed Joseph Kilkey. Maureen and his son faded away from his mind, were lost somewhere in that outer darkness. This small circle of light enclosed, and held. They worked on till three when the whistle went. The cries ceased, the winches stopped, and clouds of steam rose from beneath them. The pipes were boiling hot.

Mr. Kilkey stepped down to the deck, made his way slowly across the starboard bulwarks, stepped over coiled ropes, slings, nets, piles of wood, hammers, wire. And then he stood there looking into the darkness. Behind him he could hear the men from the different hatches shuffling off. Soon he was ringed by the silence of the ship. A man came up to him then.

‘Anything wrong, Joe?' he asked.

‘Nothing wrong with me, Dave,' he said, standing with folded arms. ‘Just going aft to have my grub.'

‘Wheelhouse again?'

‘'Spect so.'

‘God, you love that wheelhouse,' the man said. ‘Well, I'm off.'

After a few minutes Mr. Kilkey went along to the saloon, and from beneath one of the tables picked up his raincoat. Unfolding it he took out the parcel of food that Mrs. Ditchley made up for him, left the saloon and went aft. It was quite dark in the wheelhouse, but he took the piece of tallow candle from his pocket, lit it and stood it on the deck. Then he sat down to his early morning meal. He unwrapped the parcel and discovered it was egg sandwiches. ‘Not so bad,' he said to himself.

But they weren't the same. No meal was now. Everything was different when
she
was there. The whole of life was different. Mrs. Ditchley did her best, but it wasn't like having your food parcels made up by Maureen. ‘Don't know why,' he mused, ‘don't know why, but I'm beginning to get a bit fed up with it. If only she'd be sensible.'

If. Like asking for the moon. ‘One time I thought I'd married that whole Fury family, but here I am completely on my own. Never seen that feller she went off with, but he's certainly gone to her head.' He ate one sandwich, took a sup of cold tea from his bottle. ‘They all know. All these fellers here know. How they find out everything beats me. Well, I must say I've had a few surprises in my time.'