An End and a Beginning Read Online Free PDF

burn that horrible cap.” He stood up. “Well, good morning. I am glad you kept the appointment,” and he crossed the room. As he opened the door he said, “I noticed your interest in that girl. A Miss Tilsey, spinster, runs this establishment. You will have noticed the patrons, mostly middle-aged women, many of them unmarried. In her spare moments Miss Tilsey comes and helps me, and I am always glad of it.”
    â€œHow did you know I was coming out this morning?”
    â€œLittle we don’t know, Mr. Fury, little we don’t.” He pushed wide the door. “Take care of yourself. Good day.”
    â€œA weak man,” he reflected, as he closed the door and returned to his desk.
    â€œYes, I must go and see Kilkey,” thought Peter, as he went slowly down the stairs. On the bottom stair he stopped dead. The noise, the chatter, came fresh to his ears.
    â€œNot that way,” he thought, “there must be another way out.” He stood looking about him, then saw a long dark corridor, flanked by empty trays and biscuit tins. He went down until he came to a yard, and there, in front of him, lay an open gateway to the street.
    Two waitresses were coming in his direction, and as they passed him he turned his head away, then ran through the gate.
    â€œCan’t look at people. What the hell’s wrong with me?” He turned into a pub, and elbowed his way through the crowd.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWhisky.” He carried it away to the end of the room, drank it quickly, put the empty glass on the window ledge, and went out again.
    â€œAnother tram. No, I ought to try and change somewhere. I’ll change at Kilkey’s place. That’s it.” He was walking blindly from one street to another, and he heard the roar of trams, and he couldn’t find his way back to the main street; he was lost in a maze of alleys and areas.
    â€œA 19a. Where are the trams?”
    The boy looked up at him. “Just through there,” he said. He took sixpence from the man with the cap and didn’t thank him.
    â€œI’ve been walking in circles,” he thought, as he stood waiting for the tram. When it came he stood back from the other passengers, and when all had climbed aboard, he followed.
    â€œCould you put me off at Bonin Road, I’m a stranger here.”
    â€œRighto.” The tram moved off.
    â€œIt’ll seem strange seeing Kilkey after all this time. Expect he’s bent, really old, seventy if a day, must be. Can’t believe him an old man somehow.”
    He mused in his seat. He thought of Mr. Delaney, his mother, Anthony, his sister, of Rath Na.
    â€œBeen arranged. Damn them. I’ll go to New York on my own.”
    â€œBonin Road.”
    He descended the stairs, jumped off, and stood momentarily lost amongst the passengers on the pavement.
    â€œBonin Road. Is this Bonin Road?”
    A man was only too ready to oblige. “This is Bonin Road all right,” he said, “tell Bonin Road from anything else in Gelton. It stinks.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Peter Fury walked away, he began searching out numbers. “It’s away at the other end. Fancy! I can’t believe that in just a few minutes I’ll be sitting talking to Joseph Kilkey.”
    The nameplate, Bonin Road, stared down at him. That was the only thing that stared at him, since in Bonin Road he aroused no curiosity whatever.
    â€œWonder what he looks like?” He crossed the road, checking the numbers. It was a narrow street, so narrow that it almost shut out the sky.
    â€œAlways preferred the south to the north, but I don’t know why, fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one—I wonder where Maureen is at this moment, wonder if she knows I was coming out to-day? Forty-five or something like it when he married her—should never have happened—it was asking for trouble—sixty-seven, sixty-nine—expect he’s very old now—imagine Dermod