Part 16 (2/2)

”Da-is he ?”

”He's all right.” Mike turned his back on her and stared down into the fire. ”Go on up to bed.”

”I don't want to go to bed, Da.”

”Then go on die couch.”

Mary Ann looked up the broad expanse of Mike's back, then turned slowly about and went back to the couch. Her da wanted to be quiet, she knew the signs, he would only get mad if she kept on. She lay down, her eyes on him for a time until the sound of his knuckles beating on the mantelpiece made her throw herself round and face the wall again.

Her da was worried-upset . . . perhaps Mr. Lord was dying. Eeh! no, he mustn't die. If he died Tony would be to blame. What had Tony said? Eeh! yes, that Mr. Lord was his granda. Eeh! . . . Well, she had said the same thing herself. But she had only been making on; Tony hadn't been making on, he had meant it. And she had a feeling that he didn't like it ... didn't like Mr. Lord being his granda.

Her mind puzzled itself about this new problem, and when some time later she awoke to the sound of Tony's voice she couldn't believe she had been asleep and wondered how he had come in without her hearing him. He was talking softly to her da, and she-couldn't make out what he was saying, for she was lying on one ear. When she did move her head her da was speaking.

”Why didn't you come openly and tell him? This was no way to do the thing, sneaking about.”

It was some time before Tony's voice came to her, and then she could only just hear it. ”I had no

intention of telling him at all. I was paying him out because of my grandmother's life ”

”She did her own paying, I would think, to go off like that and not let on she was having his child. I don't hold much to her.”

”You didn't know her.”

”I know the old fellow, and I know this much, if he'd had a child, son or ^daughter, he'd have been a

different man. He's the loneliest creature on G.o.d's earth, that's why he tried to take her.”

Mary Ann felt their eyes on her back, but she didn't move, for if her da knew she was awake they would stop talking.

”You don't know what a life my grandmother had.”

”By the accounts I've heard of it, it was a pretty gay one. It nearly broke him, anyway.”

”A woman will spend money if she can't get anything else. He had no more feeling than an iceberg, and

he was old enough to be her father.”

”She knew that in the first place. What happened to the fellow she went off with?”

”He left her when my mother was six.”

There was silence now in the kitchen, and Mary Ann waited, trying not to turn round to see what they

were doing, and just when her curiosity was about to get the better of her, Mike's voice said, ”Well,

she's not the first woman that's had to work to bring up a child, and she won't be the last.”

”But it was different for her, she had never worked in her life, she was made for pleasant things.” Tony's voice held sorrow.

”Aren't we all!” Mike's tone was mocking.

”You don't understand.”

”I understand all right. I understand you've been brought up by a woman who had the knack of making

you see things and people exactly as she wanted you to see them. It's my idea that

your grandmother knew that she had wronged the old man and that made her keep talking about him-her conscience was at work. Were you brought up with her all the time?” ”Yes, my mother and father had to travel about, they were in Rep. I was only ten when they died. They both went together . . they were trapped in a fire in an old theatre.”

Again there was silence, and now Mary Ann was saying to herself, ”Eeh! poor things.”

”If your grandmother was hard up why didn't she write to him?”

”Write to him? You say that when you know him ! Wouldn't it have given him a kick to know that she

was begging!”

”I wonder ... I wonder. Anyway, I think she did him a great wrong. If he'd known he had a child. . . .

My G.o.d! When you come to think of it, it was wicked, d.a.m.n well wicked. I could say evil. . . . It's no use your rearing up like that, Tony. You're a young lad, you've got all your life afore you. Just imagine

someone withholding the fact that you had a child. But you've never been married, you don't know how it'd feel . . . you don't understand.”

Mary Ann heard her da pacing the mat, and then his steps stopped and his voice demanded, ”If she had

such a struggle to bring you up how did you manage the money to go to college?”

”I didn't have to have much money, I pa.s.sed for the Grammar School. Left when I was sixteen and got a

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