An End and a Beginning by James Hanley Page A

heard doors being slammed, bolts shot back. He finished his drink and left. More noise, more traffic, more hurrying people. He sat on a bench by the sailor’s church, he watched them pass. All going somewhere, all doing something, an urgency, a meaning in their hurrying footsteps.
    â€œI’ve seen thousands of faces this morning,” he thought, “and yet not a single one that I know. Hurry on morning, hurry on boat, and take me out of it.”
    He began walking again, wandering again, turning into this road, that street. He heard a distant clock striking four, and now from time to time he kept meeting bands of happy, laughing children. The schools were closing. When a church came suddenly into view he stopped. Leaning against the railings he stared down the gravelled path. “Good Lord!” he exclaimed. It was like meeting a friend. He recognised it at once. This was the path down which he had often walked, that door he had many times passed through. “I’m near Hatfields,” he thought. “Now which way is it from here?”
    â€œShall I go down that path, through that door, like I used to do, in the old days?” No. Perhaps he had better not. But he would walk towards Hatfields. “We lived there once upon a time, that was our home.”
    The day was breaking into pieces, dusk descending. Rays of coloured light fell across his path, and he immediately thought of a rainbow. This gave the long, narrow street the appearance of a tunnel. He half turned his head and there was the light, the wide window, and over the door in shining brass he read the name of a chemist. He went into this shop and asked for the directions to Hatfields. He was given this, quickly, curtly, and he forgot to thank the chemist for his service. He hurried away.
    â€œIs it worth it? What the hell’s the use?” Yet he longed to see this road again, to see and count every house. He wanted to come closer to old places. It was quite dark when he entered it. There was the great wall flanking the railway, there the familiar post office, the same ugly Methodist chapel, the newsagents, they were all here. Nothing had changed. He might never have left it. He walked slowly down one side, and came up on the other. He called out to himself the numbers of these houses, all of whose curtains were now drawn, with here and there a reflection of fires in darkened front rooms. Hidden by the shadow of the wall he stood looking at what had once been his home. Touching this brick, staring at this door, watching the window, feeling back to every living moment he could remember, he at once knew that compulsion had come to a halt. This had been the direction all along, from the opening of a gate, when he stepped clear of the high wall, and he had heard the key and the bolt shot behind him. This was where he had been walking to from the moment of freedom. Here it was, and it was over, done with, finished. He stepped clear of the wall and retraced his steps down the street. Behind him there was a noise like thunder, and he stopped to listen. An old sound, he had heard it before. The street was suddenly full of hurrying men, from the docks, the shipyards, the repairing shops, from the tugs, the dredgers, the dockgates, and from every shed. This was their road home. He had often walked behind them as a child. “Now I must find The Curving Light,” he thought, and stepped up his pace towards the docks. Everywhere lights came up like eyes, the whole world seemed on the move as he turned into one street after another. And there at last was The Curving Light, and he was standing alone in the longest street in a sailor’s town.
    He saw the light. It threw down a beam like a scimitar. He remembered this place. He had passed it many times before. A man passing beneath this light had his shadow cut in two. He drew nearer. Always, day or night, there was somebody stood beneath this light that never went out. Narrow enough to