Ernest Moriarty felt the room sway. It did not hit him on the head. He parried the ceiling with his hand. It settled down like the pressure of misery, like a cat calling in the dark, the deep swell of pent-up misery. I am here, he said, not Moorang, I have come why, because there is no longer a paper to be read, all this is over, like so much. You could feel it crumble as if a drink, and sitting in at Moorang having a drink, you would not stay, Miss Porter, you said, because Vic says I must go to the Crown, and that is the state of affairs, to have a drink, to feel a chair crumble and the shape of table in a glass of port, though not port said Vic, she said, you know, Ernest, how your chest, even at Christmas-time when Uncle Herbert sent what he would not have sent if they hadn’t given him commission on a bottle or two of port, but drink, Ernest, it’s only for your good that I say, the barman said it was fine old tawny, his wife was expecting, and sitting in at Moorang the face dissolved that expected nothing much.
The lamp had a milky china shade. It was an Aladdin lamp in the catalogue. He felt bad. He felt bad in at Moorang drinking fine old tawny port. His chest was a ravine of pain, the breath rare and hot that struggled up, he could not get up far enough, he could not drag a weight. And the voices, they went on, the voices in a bar, the random voices that said, that commercial in a check suit, the mechanic who had lost his mother the week before, said he was strung up and it bloody well served him right, because her head was beaten in, and it must have been a hammer, they thought, anyway she didn’t last long, not after the doctor came, and they caught him in the train near Scone, it was his second wife, she had a little money put by, she once had a pub in Singleton, anyway the bloke was strung up, took what was coming as cool as if, and it wasn’t as if there was reason for what he done, but then if you read the papers you often wondered what entered people’s heads, there wasn’t reason for much. Cripes, said the barman, you’re looking off, he said. Then they turned, the random faces in bars. The looped wires of telephones said, the voice said, anonymously, I don’t want to intrude because Hagan is expecting your wife, so let’s go, Ernest, let go, let go of my hand, it’s only the port and you see it’s like this, my chest and to-morrow geography, must go. They put him on the floor and shot water on his face. I’ll be better, he said, I’ll be getting home, I’ll be getting back to Happy Valley, somehow this, even at night, before the water soak, I had no business drinking port, even at Christmas it doesn’t do. Collins was starting for Happy Valley, they said, out in the garage now, would a lift, would do, the barman said. He still felt queer, his chest. But he had to go home, had promised this. He left his pyjamas at the Crown.
All his life Ernest Moriarty had been going round and round, the small circles of habit, that yet was not as satisfactory as going round and round in a room, not so comfortingly blank. All your life you had been going round in circles for a purpose, at least you thought, you did not know it was non-existent. Now you had come to a stop, the purpose gone. He felt that coming home in Collins’s truck. The wind was black. He felt it was all over, only a few straws of habit clung, you could not shake them off, like coming home, like opening the gate, like wiping your boots on the mat. He put his key in the lock, heard it rattle, wondered what he was waiting for. The frost. He went round to turn off the water-tap. The time the wash-house tap burst there was no end of a mess, and it’s washing day, said Vic, it’s a pity you’re not a plumber, Ernest, she said. It was a pity he wasn’t what he wasn’t. But there was no reason for him to be — well, anything, or what was the reason for anything when he hit her on the head. Or a hat in the hall, or a light. He went into the sitting-room. It all shelved away, and there was no reason for a lamp to walk round, round, breaking a match to find how frail, and so many more in the box, thirty or forty perhaps, as frail as a match.
He looked down at the fragments of a broken match. He looked at the lamp. He stood in the fragments of thought that the evening had strewn round, and momentary anaesthesia wrapped soothingly in black. Before it had returned, the room, that was also Vic, and not Vic, had slipped into the next room and there was…The breath rose in his chest. He could not breathe, move, heard the door, the footsteps, the rattle of his own breath. He could only stand in the sitting-room, where her hand trimmed a leaf, she said, there’s something saucy about this plant, they say you’ve got to keep it moist, though God, I’m tired of this suite, I’m tired, I’m tired, when I used to care for pink, but look at the spots, and the hole that Belper burnt, and why’ve we got to stay here all our lives, it makes me feel like suicide, only nobody would care. Vic’s life in a room was this, was pink, her hand touched, tied a bow. We’re making this, you said, it’s us, and I’m glad, Vic, you said, because… The cyclamen looked a waxen pink. The petals fluttered in his breath, that came fast, were without defence. His legs began to move.
He began to go into the other room. It was no longer the bedroom, this, it was the other room. Two separate worlds. I’ve got to go in, he said. He could feel the sweat on his chest. It ran down cold. It was a long way, and the silence, and the sounds that break through silence made it longer still. But he opened the door, he stood, she watched him stand, there was only the silence between them, and the candlelight.
She could not speak. There was nothing to say now. She sat on the bed still, as if Hagan had only gone and fear had arrested a sheet in its passage to the floor. She thought, if Fred, if Daisy, if Clem going down the street perhaps for the last time, and the time that Tiny died she cried the dream she had with Ernest’s face the shawl. This made her hand stir, touch her skin, she was naked, sitting there, with Ernest in the doorway, and his face, and his face.
Ernest, she said, and it came out as if her tongue was sticking to the word, afraid to release it on a doubtful errand, let it go out towards a face that was not Ernest’s face.
Waiting for the moment that would break the tension, it must come soon, or something break, Vic Moriarty pressed back against the wall and Ernest Moriarty standing at the door watched each other crumble away, the face known, the personality, all eliminated except the basic flesh and bone and the passions that actuated these. And that is what made her afraid. Because this was not Ernest here, the face altered in line by the passing of a few hours. She began to make little convulsive gestures with her arms against the wall. The shadow followed laboriously.
What are you standing, why don’t you move? she said.
His face looked blue. Her voice stopped, thickening with fear.
All right, she rasped. All right then, we know, she rasped.
The shadows bent down. Perhaps it was the shadow on his face that she could not properly see, was not the expression that she thought.
Ernest, she said, Ernest, wailed against the wall, beat back her voice into her mouth, her fear. If only you’ll listen, she said, I’ll tell you. Ernest, it was like this.