Winter Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

to go home. Who brought me here? I want to go back to my home.’
    â€˜You will soon be home.’
    He paused.
    â€˜There is something I must tell you …’ he paused again, ‘when Fanny comes, you must just be glad that you are together again. She will tell you everything.’
    â€˜What has she done?’
    He evaded this—‘You know about your youngest boy.’
    â€˜She wrote and told me,’ the old man said. ‘Ah, it’s hard, the poor little lad.’
    â€˜He may get out in two years if he behaves himself.’
    â€˜Where are the others? Where are my children? Nobody has come to see me, nobody.’
    â€˜Everything will right itself. Remember you are a lucky old man to be here to-day. Think of that. Think of your wife waiting for you.’
    â€˜Where is she?’
    â€˜Waiting until the morning. In the morning everything will settle itself. I do not want you to say anything if it tires you, but I must give you news of your children. Anthony. Anthony is still in the Navy, but will be discharged in eighteen months. Desmond has left Gelton. He is working at Trade Union headquarters in London. He left a year ago. Your daughter—I cannot say—she has disappeared somewhere.…’
    â€˜I remember now.’
    â€˜You remember?’
    â€˜She ran away. That’s it. Where is Joe Kilkey?’
    â€˜You will see him to-morrow.’
    â€˜Give me a drink, Father,’
    Father Moynihan held the water to his lips.
    And when the old man had drunk—‘It saddens me that she never came—she always used to come.’
    â€˜You must have had a terrible time, Dennis, two ships to fall under you in a week.’
    The old man made no reply to this, but he began to stare at the priest, to stare with a fixed interest—he suddenly said ‘Father Moynihan—your hair’s grey, you’re an old man.’
    Father Moynihan laughed. It was the first laugh the old man had heard in that room.
    â€˜D’you want to sit up?’ he asked; the old man was already making frantic efforts to do so. He lifted him.
    â€˜Why, you’re no weight at all, Dennis, what on earth have you been doing with yourself?’
    Somebody was hammering on a typewriter in the office below, the sounds came up like gunshots.
    When the priest glanced at the old man again, he found he had slipped down, he seemed to have fallen asleep.
    â€˜I’ll wait,’ he thought. ‘If he sleeps on I’ll stay the night. This man must know what is coming to him before the morning.’
    A whisper stole into the silence. ‘I’m listening,’ said the old man in the bed. ‘Go on talking, Father.’
    â€˜Your poor wife nearly went out of her mind that awful day. I remember that day as though it were yesterday. A bad day indeed for Gelton. Four hundred men. Kilkey didn’t go to work that day. When the news appeared in the paper, he went off down to see Fanny. When he got there, she was gone. And she had done a curious thing. He found the door of the house wide open, anybody could have gone in and stolen her things. Kilkey walked everywhere that day, looking for her. I remember it was a powerful hot July day. The shipping offices on the front were in a state of siege with hundreds of poor women trying to reach the office, to find out the worst or the best, but in the end their hearts were shattered by the silence. There was no news. Hours passed by, still no news. At last it came. I don’t know how your wife spent that day. I think perhaps she just walked and walked and stared out to the sea and tired herself out.’
    He bent his head—‘Dennis, I went down in the evening to see her, but there was nobody there, and Kilkey had already been there and locked the place up.’
    With his lips close to the man’s ear, he said. ‘She never went back ever again. The door was shut for good and all. I only found out what