Free Essential Stories by V.S. Pritchett Page B

a place of windows hollow-eyed with evil vigils. Within a month he had received the first note threatening his life.
    “ ’Twas yourself,” said Charlie—discovering at last his enemy. “ ’Twas yourself, Micky, that brought all this upon me. Would I be sick and destroyed if you hadn’t come back?”
    “Cripes,” said Micky, hearing the argument for the first time and pained by this madness in his brother. “Cripes, man, an’ what was the rest of ye up to? Serving God Almighty like a lot of choir boys, shooting up some poor lonely policeman from a hedge and driving old women out of their homes.”
    “Stop it,” shouted Charlie, as the memories broke upon him and he put his fingers to his ears.
    Micky threw his cigarette into the fire and took his brother by the shoulder in compassion. He was sorry for having spoken so; but Charlie ignored him. He spoke, armouring himself.
    “So it’s a coward I am, is it!” he said. “Well, I stayed when they threatened me and I’ll stay again. You’re thinking I’m a coward.” He was resolute. But behind the shrubs brushing against the window, in the spaces between the cool September stars, were the fears.
    There was nothing else for it. Charlie watched Micky preparing to go, indifferent and resigned, feeding his courage on this new picture of his brother. He turned to it as to a secret revelation. Micky was no longer his brother. He was the Destroyer, the Prince of this World, the man of darkness. Micky, surprised that his good intentions were foiled, gave notice to the landlord, to force Charlie. Charlie renewed the agreement. He spoke little; he took no notice of the dog, which had now completely deserted him. When Micky had gone it would be his. Charlie kicked it once or twice as if to remind it. He gave up swimming in the sea. He was staying here. He had all the years of his life to swim in the sea.
    Micky countered this by open neglect of his brother. He entered upon a life of wilder enjoyment. He gave every act the quality of a reckless farewell. He was out all day and half the night. In Ballady he drank the schoolmaster weeping under the table and came staggering home, roaring like an opera, and was up at dawn, no worse for it, after the duck.
    “This is a rotten old wall,” Micky said in the garden one day, and started pushing the stones off the top of it. A sign it was his wall no longer. He chopped a chair up for firewood. He ceased to make his bed. He took a dozen empty whisky bottles and, standing them at the end of the kitchen garden, used them as shooting targets. He shot three rabbits and threw two of them into the sea. He burned some old clothes, tore up his letters and gave away a haversack to the fisherman and a second gun to the schoolmaster. A careless enjoyment of destruction seized him. Charlie watched it, saying nothing. The Destroyer.
    One evening as the yellow sun flared in the pools left by the tide on the sand, Micky came upon Charlie.
    “Not a damn thing,” Micky said, tapping his gun.
    But as they stood there, some gulls which had been flying over the rocks came inland and one fine fellow flew out and circled over their heads, its taut wings deep blue in the shadow as it swung round. Micky suddenly raised his gun and fired and, before the echoes had broken in the rocks, the wings collapsed and the bird dropped warm and dead.
    “God Almighty, man,” cried Charlie, turning away with nausea, “is nothing sacred to ye?”
    “It’s no damned good,” grinned Micky, picking up the bird by the wing, which squeaked open like a fan. “Let the fish have it.” And he flung it into the sea. This was what he thought of wings.
    Then with a week to go, without thinking he struck a bad blow. He went off to Dill to say good-bye to the boys, and the retriever followed him although Charlie called it back. The races were on at Dill, but Micky spent most of the time in the pubs telling everyone he was going back to Canada. A man hearing this said