The Dark

by John McGahern

  You went, asking when you weren’t sure, across the Corrib, two swans against withering October reeds in the distance, stone buttresses alone in the water, remnants of a railway that crossed the river to Clifden once. You didn’t think. You were excited. You had the University to see.

  Then you saw it through the trees past the boathouse. A castle, old stone, and towers, green copper domes.

  Seat of learning, the gravity of days, eternal evenings, centre where you’d travel into joys and secrets shut away. The phrases of rhetoric rose the same as prayers. All the nights of sweat had meaning now. And why did it cause this rhetorical reverence or was there anything except the images and these inconsequential phrases.

  But it was hard to walk slow. Wrought iron gates with a broken gas-lamp on the pier top. The stone lodge and the chrysanthemums in the beds. A drive of tarmacadam ran past the front of the main building, rows of old chestnuts bordered the football pitch and tennis courts, raw colour of a stack of timber beyond the courts.

  It seemed strange to have come, to be standing there on tarmacadam, and looking on, the images. How much of your life would pass here? You might never even leave. A brilliant course of studies, chosen to teach, a gowned professor under the chestnuts. The roots thick as any tree of the Virginia creeper rose to spread and flower red on the stone. The great door with iron bands was open. Notices and letters were tacked on the green boards behind glass. Nobody from your house had ever reached a University before.

  Groups stood about. You fell into conversation with a student from Donegal. That night you arranged to go with him to the Savoy. At eight around Moon’s Corner he’d meet you.

  Afterwards you wandered about the town, you made sure where Moon’s Corner and the Savoy was. The bustle of the street seemed to rush as water in a tidal movement, and it was strange to try to understand that you were alive and standing in these busy streets. Outside the Skeffington Arms a boy was crying the evening newspapers. By the Claddagh through the Spanish Arch and out on the Long Walk to the sea, Galway Bay. The Dun Aongus was waiting to Aran, a trawler from Rotterdam, the sailors washing its deck with hoses, and the black-headed gulls drifting overhead. Your feet started to tire, you’d walked too much without noticing. The eyes roved, resting for moments on odd objects. Broken fish-boxes and wild grass and the sea, and was it all no more than a catalogue. A sudden flash on the memory, singing of “Galway Bay” under the town clock in Carrick a night after pub close, the drunken voices out of time: and here was where you’d go to the University. You were only hours here yet, and it was not easy to keep hold of the dream, wild grass and sea and broken fish-boxes same as anywhere, this was the University town, but it was more solid concrete and shapes and names with the sea and sky and loneliness than any dream, but at eight you would meet John O’Donnell at Moon’s Corner, it was something to look forward to, it would break the obsession that there was never possibility of possession or realization, only the confusion of all these scattered images.

  O’Donnell was already waiting when you reached the corner at eight. A shower had started, the streets black and greasy, reflecting the lamps. O’Donnell said he’d looked up the papers, and that there was a terrific cowboy in the Savoy. He’d seen it before in Dublin but wanted to see it again, and immediately you fell into step, it was marvellous to be going with someone to any picture. You got the cheapest seats, close to the screen, each of you paying for his own. A short, “Jingle Tunes” was running when you entered the dark, people were singing, and O’Donnell was hardly in his seat when he joined them.

  On top of Old Smokey

  All covered with snow, (everyone together)

  I lost my true lover

  Came a courtin’ too slow.

  O’Donnell was singing, without any self-consciousness in the world. You couldn’t. People were all about. You wished you could join too but it was no use, would it be same as this always, but it was still wonderful to be just there. This was life.

  “Come on. Sing up. We used go crazy over this in the Royal in Dublin with Tommy Dando.”

  “I can’t. I’m not used.”

  And then with relief the cowboy was running, there was silence, the cinema was lost in what was happening on the one screen. There was a feeling of being set free to share in all this running and excitement, the strong righteous man and the noble woman against the hirelings. Out on the wet street afterwards there were several heroes with gun hand crooked and unflinching walk ready to shoot their way through to the world.

  “What did you think?” O’Donnell asked.

  “It was great,” you managed to say out of the choking after effect of the emotion, all pictures were marvellous, you hadn’t seen enough to compare, people who said one was good and another bad had some secret knowledge.

  “It was smashing. Do you want to head home or would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “I don’t mind, whatever you’d like.”

  “We’ll have a cup.”

  You paid when the waitress brought the cups, everything was plastic, the cups and spoons to the green table-top.

  “Used you go to the pictures much?” you asked once the cups were stirred.

  “In Dublin, always on Sunday afternoon, and other times if there was a girl and any money. That’s when we were in the Albert College.”

  “Where used you get the girls?” you were fearful of betray¬ ing your ignorance, the trembling curiosity.

  “At the dances. Every Sunday night we were in Conarchy’s. Always more women than men. They say Dublin is the best place in the world for women.”

  “What kind were the women?”

  “Fine things. Nurses, and girls from Cathal Brugha. They used to live in a hostel in Mountjoy Square. Schweppes Lane was a great place beside the hostel, full of couples after Conarchy’s.”

  Over the coffee-cups a pain of jealousy. Schweppes Lane crowded with couples, kissing and touching in the lane’s darkness, where did they put hands, or did they strip clothes against the wall. O’Donnell had been there against the soft flesh of a girl out of Conarchy’s, and you hadn’t, that much pleasure escaped from your life for ever.

  “Have you any girl?” O’Donnell asked.

  “No. I can’t dance,” you said, though for a moment you were tempted to lie.

  “No one can dance. They just shuffle round. It’s a place to pick up girls. If you watch for a dance or two you get the hang of it. Why not come to the Jib’s Dance Thursday night? After that we could hit out to Seapoint.”

  The Jib’s Dance was in the Aula Maxima. The coloured poster in the archway had displayed a cloddish couple dancing.

  “Do you think would I be able?”

  “Of course,” O’Donnell laughed.

  The café was closing. At Moon’s Corner you parted. O’Donnell had to cross the river past the University. It was still raining. Eyre Square was lit more with neon than the lamps. You began to touch the wet iron railings with your fingers for no reason as you walked, listened to your feet go on the pavement. You wished you could have walked with O’Donnell, even though you’d have to come back across the sleeping town on your own, and you wished you could find someone to talk any rubbish with when you reached Prospect Hill, anything to avoid the four walls of the room and the electric light on the bed, but it was too late, you had to climb on the stairs creaking under your feet on the bare brown linoleum. When you switched on the light you shivered to see the cream coverlet flood bare with light. You had come to the University, you’d sleep your first night in the town. You thought of Mahoney in another bed in the same night, and that you’d promised to write, it’d pass some of the time, it’d be something to do now.

  You wrote to a formula on the glass-covered dressing-table. You’d arrived safely, you’d got digs, you’d seen the town and the University, tomorrow you’d be enrolled. You hoped they were well and that they’d write soon.

  You left the letter ready for posting in the morning, and then undressed with a sort of melanchol
y deliberation. You’d come at last to the University and you’d still to take off your clothes, drape them on the back of the chair. It was the death of the day, and the same habitual actions of the funeral as always, and no matter what happened all days and lives ended this way. Only longing and dream changed.

  As you pulled back the corner of the sheets you knelt, mechanically going through the night prayers, what you’d not done for months, sense of the shocking space and silence of the world about your own perishing life in the room lessened by the habitual words and the old smell of camphor from the sheets in which your face was buried.

  In the double bed you lay awake for long, listening to cars close and fade, and the fascination of feet you knew nothing about go by on the concrete underneath the window.

  29

  THE DREAM WAS TORN PIECEMEAL FROM THE UNIVERSITY before the week was over. Everyone wanted as much security and money as they could get.

  “What are you doing?” was the conversation under the notices in the archway.

  “Dentistry.”

  Why?

  “It’s about the best. There’s a shortage. You can earn £4,000 a year. The initial cost of the equipment to start out with is the worst, but there’s a lot of hard cash in it after that.”

  Will teeth absorb your life?

  “No, but you can get interested in anything if you’re at it long enough and if you’ve enough money it can compensate for a lot. If you have to be scraping all the time for money see how long you’ll be happy.”

  And money was dream enough to soldier on too. Choice of car and golf club and suburban house, grade A hotels by any sea in summer, brandy and well-dressed flesh.

  “Security. Security. Everyone’s after security. And the only gilt-edged security to be had is the kingdom of heaven,” the Reverend Bull Reegan thumping at the old annual retreats in Carrick.

  The college had opened. You’d listened to the President’s address, a white-haired Monsignor, saying something about an idea of a university in Gaelic, with many quotations—and no one able to follow.

  Classes had commenced, and still you didn’t know what to do. You drifted from one lecture to another, soon you’d have to decide.

  “The Association of Scientists estimates that by 1968 the present serious shortage of scientists will have more than doubled. But standards are rising. Last year out of a class of thirty-two no more than fourteen passed their B.Sc. You must have aptitude and be prepared to work. It is no place for the frivolous. But those who qualify can be assured of a well remunerated position.”

  The appearance of the lecturer didn’t seem to matter as you left, neither his shape nor features nor the clothes he wore, he was what he said. The University was here. Green oaks lined the boundary wall. Farther out was Galway Bay. Everybody in the world was supposed to be unique.

  “Unless you have private incomes the majority of you doing English must know that you’ll wind up teachers if you’re lucky, which has its compensations, though affluence is unlikely to be numbered among them. If there are any among you who have literary ambitions the evidence would seem to point to a dosshouse or a jail as a more likely place of genesis than a University,” and went on to say that nothing interfered so much with his day as the unaesthetic sight of students lounging on the drive when he came in and out.

  On the walk as he was laughed at afterwards, you’d heard them say that he had only one real ambition, to drive to Dublin in under three hours, he’d already had several crashes in the attempt.

  Though there were one or two who simply spoke about their subject with love, and their quiet excitement was able to come through, one frail grey-haired woman in a botany class, a younger man at mathematics who continually brushed imaginary chalk specks from his gown as he spoke and you came away wanting to learn and share, both were beautiful and young in some way.

  Your doubts grew as you wandered, you wanted less and less to stay the more you saw, but it was easier to stay than go. It was clear that there’d be little dream, mostly the toil of lectures, and at night the same swotting and cramming in a room for the exams same as last year. You wondered as you came home by Eglington Street at four if it’d be long till the E.S.B. clerkships were announced, they were based on the Leaving results, you’d entered the same as the others, and the same marks that got the Scholarships were bound to get high there too. If you stayed you’d have to choose some course before the end of this week, this dithering had a limit, you thought it had to be Science. The fees were too high for medicine. Six years was too long a course. Science was three years. A job was certain at its end. Fear close to despair came at the image of failing or getting sick or losing the Scholarship, you’d have to fall back on Mahoney for support. It was frightening.

  The night was the night of the Jibs’ Dance in the Aula, a new poster was up in the archway, you’d to meet John O’Donnell inside at nine.

  The preparations took over an hour, shaving and washing, clean white shirt and collar out of the case, shining of the shoes, brushing of every speck from the suit, the hair flattened with Brylcream, the teeth brushed, the painful knotting and unknotting of the wine tie before the mirror, diarrhoea of tension.

  What would it be like, the band, the music, the dances, the women? Would you be scorned by these women?

  Because you couldn’t dance.

  Were you good-looking enough, would they look at you with revulsion?

  Would you by watching pick up the steps and rhythms of the dance?

  Would you have courage to ask a girl to dance?

  Would you find yourself on the floor trampling on her feet, not able to dance, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not able to dance, I’m only learning,” and would she leave you in the middle, “You’d better pick someone else to learn on,” or would she endure you in stony silence?

  What would you talk to a girl about?

  Would you be able to endure the white softness of her bare arm, the rustle of taffeta or the scent of lacquer when she leaned her hair close, without losing control and trying to crush her body to yours?

  Would you be the one leper in the hall at Ladies Choice, flinching as every woman in the place casually inspected and rejected you, their favour falling on who was beside you, the other men melting like snow about you until you stood a rejected laughing stock out on the floor in the way of the dancers, no woman would be seen with you? It would be as if your life was torn out of your breast by every couple dancing together and you could slink towards the shadow of the pillars, fit to weep, watch your own mangled life go dancing past.

  “Off to the dance,” they said downstairs as you went.

  “Off to the dance,” you repeated and pressed your features into an embarrassed smile.

  “All the girls will be falling for him tonight, but don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”

  “No. Good night.”

  Laughter wreathed about their “Good night”, and was it mockery.

  Down the hill to Eyre Square and coldness of the night on your flushed face and by Moon’s Corner down Eglington Street. It was after nine on the clocks, every step brought you nearer to your first dance and you wished they went in the opposite direction. It would be so easier to hang about the streets, but you’d promised to meet John O’Donnell beside the bandstand at nine, it was already past nine. With a sinking of the guts you crossed the Weir Bridge round the canal, the high jail wall there, and the footpath under the green oaks up University Road. There were all lights about the college, and it was surely music you could hear. Your feet slowed, you let your eyes close, if only you could turn back.

  Inside the lodge gates there was some commotion. You crossed the other side of the road, glad of any excuse of delay, the blood pounding at the temples, you felt you could sit all night on a lavatory bowl. The hands were trembling.

  “Control yourself. Control yourself. It’s not the end of the world. It’ll be forgotten by tomorrow morning,” but it was no use.

  “You can’t face it
,” the nerves shivered.

  “If you don’t go to this dance it’ll be even harder the next time, you’ll never be able to go, you’ll never be able to take any natural part in life, get any natural fulfilment. You’ll be an oddity all your days.

  “No. No. I’m not able to face it. I’m sick. Another night it’ll be easier.”

  You’d drawn a most level with the gates on the opposite pavement. If you stood and stopped the crazy fighting within yourself you’d be able to see what the noise inside the gates was. It was a crowd of students out of range of the lodge lamp under the chestnuts. A pair of girls with college scarves passed in. The shouting started up again into a foxtrot drifting from within the quadrangle. The words were easy enough to catch out of the general howl as the girls came level.

  You’re out for your onions tonight.

  Bless me, mother, for I’m going to sin.

  Get them off you. Get them off you.

  Dance, mother, dance.

  The phases could be picked out before the shouting rose to one general howl of derision as the girls hurried up the drive to the main door.

  A single man student went through the gates, the same performance started under the trees. He paid no attention. He continued along the drive, in the one unruffled stride, and that was the way to go past, but you were certain by this that you wouldn’t go past, perhaps you’d not pass even if they weren’t there, they were no more than the easy way out you’d be looking for all along. You stood on the pavement and watched and listened. The music came over the short distance from the quadrangle, changed to a quickstep you recognized from some sponsored radio programme.

  A vision of the dance floor came to plague you, naked shoulders of the women, glitter of jewellery on their throats, scent and mascara and the blood on their lips, the hiss of silk or taffeta stretching across their thrusting thighs, and always their unattainable crowned heads floated past. And you stood on the pavement outside the lodge gates.