He reached up for the tea absent-mindedly and poured hot water into the tea-pot. He watched it for a while with a sad look on his face, watched the fire leaping about it as if it were a soul in hell. The cups were white and undistinguished and he felt a faint nausea as he poured the tea into them. He reached out for the tray, put the tea-cup and a plate with bread and jam on it, and took it over to the bed. His mother sat up and took the tray from him, settling herself laboriously back against the pillows. She looked at it and said:
‘Why didn’t you wash this tray? Can’t you see it’s all dirty round the edges?’ He stood there stolidly for a moment, not listening, watching her frail, white-clad body, and her spiteful, bitter face. He ate little but drank three cups of tea. Then he took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one nervously and self-consciously.
‘Cigarettes again? Don’t you know that there’s very little money coming into the house. If it weren’t for your father’s pension where would you be . . . you who’s never done a day’s work in your life? Answer me!’ she screamed. ‘Why are you sitting there like a dummy, you silly fool!’ He took no notice, but puffed at his cigarette. There was a terrible weariness in his eyes. Nowadays he seldom felt his body tired: it was always his mind. This voice of hers, these pettinesses of hers, were always attacking his mind, burrowing beneath it, till he felt himself in a dark cave from which there was never to be any escape. Sometimes words came to him to silence her, but between the words leaving his mind and leaving his lips they had changed: they had lost their import, their impact, and their usefulness.
His mind now seemed gradually to be clearing up, and he was beginning to judge his own actions and hers. Everything was clearing up: it was one of his moments. He turned round on his chair from a sudden impulse and looked at her intensely. He had done this very often before, had tried to cow her into submission: but she had always laughed at him. Now however he was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. Her mouth was open and there were little crumbs upon her lower lip. Her face had sharpened itself into a birdlike quickness: she seemed to be pecking at the bread with a sharp beak in the same way as she pecked cruelly at his defences. He found himself considering her as if she were some kind of animal. Detachedly he thought: how can this thing make my life a hell for me? What is she anyway? She’s been ill for ten years: that doesn’t excuse her. She’s breaking me up so that even if she dies I won’t be any good for anyone. But what if she’s pretending? What if there is nothing wrong with her? At this a rage shook him so great that he flung his half-consumed cigarette in the direction of the fire in an abrupt, savage gesture. Out of the silence he heard a bus roaring past the window, splashing over the puddles. That would be the boys going to the town to enjoy themselves. He shivered inside his loneliness and then rage took hold of him again. How he hated her! This time his gaze concentrated itself on her scraggy neck, rising like a hen’s out of her plain white nightgown. He watched her chin wagging up and down: it was stained with jam and flecked with one or two crumbs. His sense of loneliness closed round him, so that he felt as if he were on a boat on the limitless ocean, just as his house was on a limitless moorland. There was a calm, unspeaking silence, while the rain beat like a benediction on the roof. He walked over to the bed, took the tray from her as she held it out to him. He had gone in answer to words which he hadn’t heard, so hedged was he in his own thoughts.
‘Remember to clean the tray tomorrow,’ she said. He walked back with the tray fighting back the anger that swept over him carrying the rubbish and debris of his mind in its wake. He turned back to the bed. His mind was in a turmoil of hate, so that he wanted to smash the cup, smash the furniture, smash the house. He kept his hands clenched, he the puny and unimaginative. He would show her, avenge her insults with his unintelligent hands. There was the bed, there was his mother. He walked over.
She was asleep, curled up in the warmth with the bitter, bitter smile upon her face. He stood there for a long moment while an equally bitter smile curled up the edge of his lips. Then he walked to the door, opened it, and stood listening to the rain.
An American Sky
He stood on the deck of the ship looking towards the approaching island. He was a tall man who wore brownish clothes: and beside him were two matching brown cases. As he stood on the deck he could hear Gaelic singing coming from the saloon which wasn’t all that crowded but had a few people in it, mostly coming home for a holiday from Glasgow. The large ship moved steadily through the water and when he looked over the side he could see thin spitlike foam travelling alongside. The island presented itself as long and green and bare with villages scattered along the coast. Ahead of him was the westering sun which cast long red rays across the water.
He felt both
