The Dark

by John McGahern

  The Dark

  John McGahern

  to ANNIKKI LAAKSI

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  1

  “SAY WHAT YOU SAID BECAUSE I KNOW.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Out with it I tell you.”

  “I don’t know I said anything.”

  “F-U-C-K is what you said, isn’t it? That profane and ugly word. Now do you think you can bluff your way out of it?”

  “I didn’t mean, it just came out.”

  “The filth that’s in your head came out, you mean. And I’m going to teach you a lesson for once. You’d think there’d be some respect for your dead mother left in the house. And trying to sing dumb—as if butter wouldn’t melt. But I’ll teach you.”

  He took the heavy leather strap he used for sharpening his razor from its nail on the side of the press.

  “Come on with me. Upstairs. I’ll teach you a lesson for once. I’ll teach you a lesson for once,” he said with horrible measured passion through his teeth, the blood mounted to his face. “I’ll teach you a lesson this house won’t forget in a hurry.”

  “I didn’t mean it, Daddy. I didn’t mean it, it just slipped out.”

  “Up the stairs. March. I’m telling you. Up the stairs.”

  By the shoulder Mahoney pushed him out the door into the hallway towards the stairs.

  “March, march, march,” he kept grinding as they went. “Quickly. No, not in there,” when he turned for the room where they both slept together. “Into the girls’ room. This’ll have to be witnessed. I’ll teach a lesson this house won’t forget.”

  The two large beds where all the girls slept faced the door, the little table between them, and above it on the wall the picture of the Ascension. A plywood wardrobe and a black leather armchair stood beside the empty fireplace. Mona rose out of the bedclothes in fright at their coming.

  “I’m going to teach this gent a lesson. Your sister can be witness of this. Now off with your clothes. I’m going to teach you a lesson. Quick. Strip. Off with your clothes.”

  Slowly, in a dazed horror, he got off his jacket and wept.

  “No. I didn’t mean it, Daddy. It just slipped out.”

  “Off with your jersey. Quick. We can’t stand here all day,” a white froth showed on his lips. The eyes stared out beyond the walls of the room. The belt twitched against his trousers, an animal’s tail.

  “Off with the trousers. Off with trousers.”

  “No, no.”

  “Off with the trousers, I said.”

  He just moved closer. He didn’t lift a hand, as if the stripping compelled by his will alone gave him pleasure.

  “Off with the trousers,” and with frightened weeping the trousers were let slip down around the ankles on the floor.

  “Off with the shirt,” he ground quietly, and when the shirt was off the boy stood completely naked. With the belt he pointed to the armchair.

  “Into that chair with you. On your mouth and nose. I’ll give your arse something it won’t forget in a hurry.”

  “No, Daddy, no. I didn’t mean,” he gave one last whimper but he had to lie in the chair, lie there and wait as a broken animal. Something in him snapped. He couldn’t control his water and it flowed from him over the leather of the seat. He’d never imagined horror such as this, waiting naked for the leather to come down on his flesh, would it ever come, it was impossible and yet nothing could be much worse than this waiting.

  “I’ll teach you a lesson for once,” and then he cried out as the leather came, exploding with a shot on the leather of the armrest over his ear, his whole body stiff, sweat breaking, and it was impossible to realize he hadn’t actually been hit yet.

  “No, no, no,” he cried as he tried to rise.

  “Don’t move. Don’t move. Move and I’ll cut that arse off you. I’m only giving you a taste of what you’re going to get. I’m just showing you and shut that shouting,” and he was willed by fear back on his mouth and nose, not able to move, shivering fits beginning to come, and the anguish and squalor was impossible, but would the black leather cut across his flesh this time, it was horrible and worse than death to think.

  It came as it came before, a rifle crack on the armrest, the same hysterical struggle, and he hadn’t been hit yet, it was unreal.

  “Don’t move and shut that shouting,” and when he was reasonably still except for the shivering and weeping, the leather came for the third time exactly as before. He didn’t know anything or what he was doing or where the room was when the leather exploded on the black armrest beside where his ear was.

  “Shut up that racket and get on your feet. Quick. And shut up. It’s on the bare skin you’ll get it the next time but that taste’ll do for this time. Get your clothes on you. You can count yourself lucky. Get up. Get up.”

  It was such a struggle to realize it was over. He had to try to get on his feet out of the chair, it was a kind of tearing, and to stand naked on the floor. The shivering fits of crying came and went, but quieter. He was only aware of Mona’s frightened wailing in the bed when Mahoney shouted, “You in the bed shut up before you get cause. Shut up now. Let that be a lesson to you. I don’t know whether it’s sick you are or foxing in that bed these last days. And you—you get your clothes, and waste no time getting downstairs,” he turned to the naked boy before he left the room, his face still red and heated, the leather hanging dead in his hand.

  It was a real struggle to get each piece of clothing on after he’d gone, the hands clumsy and shaking. The worst was the vapoury rush of thoughts, he couldn’t get any grip on what had happened to him, he’d never known such a pit of horror as he’d touched, nothing seemed to matter any more. His mother had gone away years before and left him to this. Day of sunshine he’d picked wild strawberries for her on the railway she was dying.

  “Did he hit you at all?” Mona was asking from the bed.

  “No.”

  The word opened such a floodgate that he had to hurry out of the room with the last of his clothes in his hands, by the front door out to the old bolted refuge of the lavatory, with the breeze blowing in its one airhole. There they all rushed hours as these to sit in the comforting darkness and reek of Jeyes Fluid to weep and grope their way in hatred and self-pity back to some sort of calm.

  2

  THEY ALL GOT BEATINGS, OFTEN FOR NO REASON, BECAUSE THEY laughed when he was in foul humour, but they learned to make him suffer—to close their life against him and to leave him to himself.

  “I’m told nothing in this house, never. I might as well be a leper but who’s bringing you up a
lone without help, who’s earning the bread,” he’d complain.

  They’d listen silently, with grave faces: but once they’d turn to each other they’d smile cruelly. He couldn’t have it both ways. He’d put himself outside and outside they’d make him stay. Neither brutality nor complaining could force a way in but it was not so easy to keep him out when he changed and offered them an outing, to Duffy’s circus, or a day on the river.

  “It’d be nice to make a day of it fishing tomorrow.”

  They’d make no answer, they’d watch him and each other, they didn’t trust.

  “Why can’t you speak out? We could go after first Mass and bring sandwiches and make a day of it.”

  “It’d be nice,” they weren’t sure, they didn’t trust enough to want to go.

  “We’d be able to get bottles of lemonade to drink with the sandwiches at Knockvicar. We might get a few pike too.”

  And suddenly they trusted again because they wanted, he was their father, this time might be different and happy. They laughed. Tomorrow they’d go together in the tarred boat to Knockvicar.

  The old boat held together by tar and pitch and sand was moored under a sally on the river, dead leaves of the sally on the ribs and floorboards with the fish scales.

  They took their places in the boat before he untied it, and with one knee on the edge drove it out into the stream, and clambered on to the rowing-seat while it was moving. They began to let out the spoons as he pulled.

  “Watch now. Hold the lines tight. I hear a twenty-pounder coming round by Moran’s Bay on a motor-bike,” he joked and they laughed but their fingers trembled on the white lines, feeling the vibration of the spoons and then someone shouted.

  “I have a one, Daddy. He’s pulling. Quick.”

  “Watch that you don’t give him slack line. Hold him,” he shouted back. He started to row fiercely, shouting, “Try and keep the boat shifting,” as he let go the oars to take the line. They took his place at the oars but they were too excited to pull much.

  “Try and keep the boat on the move,” he had to say.

  They watched him drag the fighting fish close, hand over hand.

  “He’s a good one. He’s trying for the bottom.”

  And then the fish was sliding towards the boat on the surface, the mouth open, showing the vicious teeth and the whiteness and the spoon hooked in the roof of the mouth. He would make his last fight at the side of the boat, it was dangerous if the hooks weren’t in firmly, he could shake them free, the sinking of the heart as they rattled loose. But Mahoney had leaned out and got him by the gills with his fingers. He was lifting him into the boat.

  “He’s four pounds. That’s a start, I’m telling you.”

  They watched the pike on the floorboards and they gloated, the gleaming yellow stripes across the back and the white swollen belly, the jaws with the vicious rows of teeth snapping air as blood trickled from the gills.

  When the boat was moving again, all the spoons rescued from the bottom and spinning, the bell for second Mass came clear over the water.

  “It’s only eleven yet and we have a right pike,” he said as he rowed. Soon the noise of cars and speech crossing the bridge in the distance on the way to Mass mingled with the constant rippling of the oars. The last bell rang when there was quiet.

  “They’re starting into Mass now. If you’re not early afoot and at first Mass there’s no length left in the day. It’s gone and wasted.”

  “And we’ve a pike caught, Daddy.”

  “We have and most of the day left and on the river.”

  “I’ve a one this time,” a shout rose. Another fish was hooked. The same struggle started. And the boat was sliding in its own ripple in the narrow reaches of the river, in the calm under the leaning trees of Oakport, wood strawberries in the moss under the heaviest beeches, cattle in the fields the side facing the wood. He rowed that way under the trees to Knockvicar, where he bought lemonade in the post office, and they ate the sandwiches on the river bank. Afterwards he slept with his straw hat over his face while they left the bottles back and played.

  He woke in less than the hour, but he was drowsy and different; though he said, “This is the way to live,” as he pushed the boat with an oar out from the bank, the effort to still praise the day was growing strained, and a wary silence grew over the boat turned towards home. Mahoney rowed in silence, it was easy in the calm of Oakport, but once they left the narrower reaches he had to fight the wind.

  “A sleep in the middle of the day if you’re not used to it gives you a damned headache,” he was tiring, cursing every time the waves fouled his stroke, and in this rough water they let the lines cross and tangle without noticing, they were so intent and anxious. When they did it was too late and once he saw the mess his growing frustration turned their way.

  “Now do you see,” he left the oars. “Too cursed lazy to watch the lines while I break my back against this wind.”

  Except for one line out on a bamboo rod the spinning spoons had turned the lines into a tangle that’d take hours to loose.

  “It’ll take a day to get that mess out and to think I brought you out fishing. We have to row home with one bait out. What tempted me to bring you at all. God, Ο God, such a mis-fortunate crowd of ignoramuses to be saddled with,” he shouted, while they listened in hatred, they shouldn’t have trusted, they hadn’t even wanted to come out, they could take his throat, but they were afraid to even stir on the seats.

  He was grinding his teeth, a habit when he was in a rage, and then he caught two of them and shook them violently.

  “Too useless to do anything while I kill myself,” he mouthed and only for the dangerous rocking of the boat his rage would have carried him on its own impetus.

  “Such a cross to have to live under,” he complained back at the oars, and started to pull furiously, the boat lifting against the rock of water, the line on the bamboo rod taut with the speed and the spoon pulled to the surface far behind and glittering.

  They sat in silence, the boredom of watching the oars, violence was preferable to this constant nagging. “God, Ο God, Ο God, such a curse,” at the oars.

  The seagulls were screaming over their island of bare rocks ringed with reeds on McCabe’s shore as the nag-nag-nag went like a hacksaw across the steel of their hatred.

  They carried the fish home in the same dogged silence, with the tangled lines, and there he changed again.

  “It was a good day’s outing we had anyhow,” he enthused.

  “It was good,” they were utterly watchful.

  “We must go on the river oftener.”

  “It’d be nice to go.”

  “What about a game of cards?” he took the pack from the window.

  “We have to tidy up and get the dinner ready for tomorrow.”

  “But that won’t take you all night. You can manage it later.”

  “We better scale and gut the pike too, they go bad quick this time. It won’t take too long. Then we can play,” they evaded.

  They gathered in the scullery to do the very little they had to do: scrape the scales of the pike with the big bread-knife, cabbage put with a portion of bacon in the aluminium saucepan and the potatoes washed and left ready, the dusk broken by a candle burning on a canister lid in the window.

  “Does anyone want a game of cards?” a softly mimicking voice caused a stifled burst of laughing as they finished.

  They stood stiff to listen in the scullery. His chair creaked. The habitual hissing he made with his lips when he played alone came. Buttons of his sleeve scraped on the wooden edge. His hands brushed the soft green surface on the table as he gathered in the cards for the flick-flick of the patient dealing again. A grim smile of understanding showing on the faces in the scullery with the candle flame burning before the shaving-mirror in the window.

  “Let him play alone.”

  3

  THE WORST WAS TO HAVE TO SLEEP WITH HIM THE NIGHTS HE wanted love, strain of waiting for him to
come to bed, no hope of sleep in the waiting—counting and losing the count of the thirty-two boards across the ceiling, trying to pick out the darker circles of the knots beneath the varnish. Watch the moon on the broken brass bells at the foot of the bed. Turn and listen and turn. Go over the day that was gone, what was done or left undone, or dream of the dead days with her in June.

  The dreams and passing of time would break with the noise of the hall door opening, feet on the cement, his habitual noises as he drank barley water over the dying fire, and at last the stockinged feet on the stairs.

  He was coming and there was nothing to do but wait and grow hard as stone and lie.

  “Are you sleeping?”

  The one thing was to keep the eyes shut no matter what and to lie stiff as a board.

  “You’re asleep so?”

  It was such breathing relief to hear the soft plump of his clothes being let fall on the floor. And then the winding of the clock.

  A sudden pause instead of him pulling back the sheets, he was fumbling through the heap of clothes on the floor. A match struck and flared in the dark. It was brought close. He could feel the heat on his face. His lids lit up like blood- soaked curtains. With a cry he turned sideways and brought his hands to his face. When he could look the flame had burned down the black char of matchwood to Mahoney’s fingers, and his face was ugly with suspicion.

  “You were quick to wake?”

  He’d have to pull himself together to answer.

  “I was sleeping. I felt something.”

  The match flame had burned out.

  “You didn’t seem to be sleeping much to me?”

  “I was sleeping. I got frightened.”

  Hatred took the place of fear, and it brought the mastery of not caring much more. No one had right to bring a match burning close to his face in the night to see if he was sleeping or not.

  “I was sleeping and you frightened me with the match. Did you want me for anything that you cracked the match?”

  “No. I just wanted to see if you were asleep and alright. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”