The Collected Stories

by John McGahern

  ‘We’re stuck with one another.’

  ‘Were you upset when your marriage failed?’ she changed.

  ‘Naturally. In the end, there was no choice. We couldn’t be in the same room together for more than a couple of minutes without fighting. I could never figure out how the fights started, but they always did.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone else?’

  ‘Nothing that lasted. I worked. I visited my parents until they died. Those sort of pieties are sometimes substitutes for life in this country – or life itself. We’re back to the old subject and I’m talking too much.’

  ‘No. I’m asking too many questions.’

  ‘What’ll you do now that you have your doctorate?’

  ‘Teach. Write. Wait on tables. I don’t know.’

  ‘And your husband or friend?’

  ‘Husband,’ she said. ‘We were married but it’s finished. We were too young.’

  ‘Would you like more tea, or for me to walk you back to the Clarence? … Or would you like to spend the night here?’

  She paused for what seemed an age, and yet it could not have been more than a couple of moments.

  ‘I’d like to spend the night here.’

  He did not know how tense his waiting had been until he felt the release her words gave. It was as if blank doors had slid back and he was being allowed again into the mystery of a perpetual morning, a morning without blemish. He knew it by now to be an old con trick of nature, and that it never failed, only deepened the irony and the mystery. ‘I’ll be able to show you the city tomorrow. You can check out of your hotel then if you wish. And there are the two rooms,’ he was beginning to say when she came into his arms.

  As he waited for her, the poet’s sudden angry accusation came back. Such accusations usually came to rankle and remain long after praise had failed, but not this evening. He turned it over as he might a problem that there seemed no way round, and let it drop. If it was true, there was very little that could be done about it now. It was in turn replaced by the phrase that had come to him earlier by the sea’s edge; and had he not seen love in the person of his old mother reduced to noticing things about a farmyard?

  ‘I hope you’re not puzzling over something like “life” again,’ a teasing call came from the bedroom.

  ‘No. Not this time.’ He rose to join her.

  In the morning they had coffee and toast in the sunlit kitchen with the expectation of the whole day waiting on them. Then they walked in the empty streets of the city, looked through the Green before going to the hotel to bring her things back to the flat.

  The following days were so easy that the only anxiety could be its total absence. The days were heightened by the luxury and pleasure of private evenings, the meals she cooked that were perfection, the good wine he bought, the flowers; desire that was never turned aside or exasperated by difficulty.

  At the end of the holiday, he had to go back to the office, and she put off the Dundalk visit and began to go to the Trinity Library. Many people were not back in the office, and he was able to work without interruption for the whole of the first morning. What he had to do was to isolate the relevant parts of the section and reduce them to a few simple sentences.

  At the afternoon meeting the Minister was the more nervous. He was tall and muscular, small blue eyes and thick red hair, fifteen years the younger man, with a habit of continually touching anybody close to him that told of the large family he grew up in. They went over and over the few sentences he had prepared until the Minister had them by rote. He was appearing on television that night and was extremely apprehensive.

  ‘Good man.’ He grasped McDonough’s shoulder with relief when they finished. ‘One of these evenings before long you must come out and have a bite with us and meet the hen and chickens.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to. And good luck on the TV. I’ll be watching.’

  ‘I’ll need all the luck I can get. That bitch of an interviewer hates my guts.’

  They watched the television debate together in the flat that evening. The Minister had reason to be apprehensive. He was under attack from the beginning, but bludgeoning his way. As he watched, McDonough wondered if his work had been necessary at all. He could hardly discern his few sentences beneath the weight of the Minister’s phrases. ‘I emphatically state … I categorically deny … I say without any equivocation whatsoever … Having consulted the best available opinions in the matter’ (which were presumably McDonough’s own).

  ‘What did you think?’ he asked when he switched off the set.

  ‘He was almost touching,’ she said carefully. ‘Amateurish maybe. His counterpart in the States might be no better, but he certainly would have to be more polished.’

  ‘He was good at handstands and somersaults once,’ he said, surprised at his own sense of disappointment. ‘I’ve become almost fond of him. Sometimes I wish we had better people. They’ll all tell him he did powerfully. What’ll we do? Would you like to go for a quick walk?’

  ‘Why don’t we?’ She reached for her cardigan.

  Two days later she went to Dundalk, and it wasn’t certain how long she intended to remain there. ‘I guess I’ve come so far that they’ll expect me to stay over the weekend.’

  ‘You must please yourself. You have a key. I’ll not be going anywhere.’

  They had come together so easily that the days together seemed like a marriage without any of the drama of a ceremony.

  When he was young he had desired too much, and so spread his own fear. Now that he was close to losing everything – was in the direct path of the wind – it was little short of amazing that he should come on this extraordinary breathing space.

  Almost in disbelief he went back in reflection to the one love of his life, a love that was pure suffering. In a hotel bedroom in another city, unable to sleep by her side, he had risen and dressed. He had paused before leaving the room to gaze on the even breathing of her sleep. All that breath had to do was frame one word, and a whole world of happiness would be given, but it was for ever withheld. He had walked the morning streets until circling back to the hotel he came on a market that was just opening and bought a large bunch of grapes. The grapes were very small and turning yellow and still damp, and were of incredible sweetness. She was just waking and had not missed him when he came back into the room. They ate the grapes on the coverlid and each time she lifted the small bunches to her mouth he remembered the dark of her armpits. He ached to touch her but everything seemed to be so fragile between them that he was afraid to even stir. It seemed that any small movement now could bring calamity. Then, laughing, she blew grape seeds in his face and, reaching out her arms, drew him down. She had wanted their last day together to be pleasant. She was marrying another man. Later he remembered running between airport gates looking for flights that had all departed.

  It was eerie to set down those days beside the days that had just gone by, call them by the same name. How slowly those days had moved, as if waiting for something to begin: now all the days were speeding, slipping silently by like air.

  Two evenings later, when he let himself into the flat and found Mary Kelleher there, it was as if she had never been away.

  ‘You didn’t expect me back so soon?’

  ‘I thought you’d still be in Dundalk, but I’m glad, I’m delighted.’ He took her in his arms.

  ‘I had as much of Dundalk as I wanted, and I missed you.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘It was all right. The cousins were nice. They had a small house, crammed with things – religious pictures, furniture, photos. There was hardly place to move. Everything they did was so careful, so measured out. After a while I felt I could hardly breathe. They did everything they possibly could to make me welcome. I read the poems at last.’ She put the book with the brown cover on the table. ‘I read them again on the train coming back. I loved them.’

  ‘I’ve long suspected that those very pure love sonnets are all addressed to himself,�
�� McDonough said. ‘That was how the “ignorant bloody apes and mediocrities” could be all short-circuited.’

  ‘Some are very funny.’

  ‘I’m so glad you liked them. I’ve lived with some of them for years. Would you like to go out to eat? Say, to Bernardo’s?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d much prefer to stay home. I’ve already looked in the fridge. We can rustle something up.’

  That weekend they went together for the long walk in the mountains that he had intended to take the day they met. They stopped for a drink and sandwiches in a pub near Blessington just before two o’clock, and there they decided to press on to Rathdrum and stay the night in the hotel rather than turn back into the city.

  It was over dinner in the near empty hotel dining-room that he asked if she would consider marrying him. ‘There’s much against it. I am fifty. You would have to try to settle here, where you’ll be a stranger,’ and he went on to say that what he had already was more than he ever expected, that he was content to let it be, but if she wanted more then it was there.

  ‘I thought that you couldn’t be married here.’ Her tone was affectionate.

  ‘I meant it in everything but name, and even that can be arranged if you want it enough.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With money. An outside divorce. The marriage in some other country. The States, for instance.’

  ‘Can’t you see that I already love you? That it doesn’t matter? I was half teasing. You looked so serious.’

  ‘I am serious. I want to be clear.’

  ‘It is clear and I am glad – and very grateful.’

  They agreed that she would spend one week longer here in Dublin than she had planned. At Christmas he would go to New York for a week. She would have obtained her doctorate by then. James White would be surprised. There were no serious complications in sight. They were so tired and happy that it was as if they were already in possession of endless quantities of time and money.

  The Creamery Manager

  The books and files had been taken out but no one yet had stopped him from entering his office. Tired of sitting alone listening to the rain beat on the iron, he came out on the platform where he could look down on the long queue of tractors towing in the steel tanks, the wipers making furious, relentless arcs across the windscreens as they waited. He knew all the men sitting behind the glass of the cabs by name; that he had made his first business when he came to manage the creamery years before. Often on a wet summer’s day, when there could be no rush at hay, many of them would pull in below the platform to sit and talk. The rough, childish faces would look up in a glow of pleasure at the recognition when he shouted out their names. Some would flash their lights.

  Today no one looked up, but he could see them observing him in their mirrors after they had passed. They probably already knew more precisely than he what awaited him. Even with that knowledge he would have preferred it if they looked up. All his life he had the weakness of wanting to please and give pleasure.

  When the Angelus bell rang from Cootehall, he began to think that they might have put off coming for him for another day, but soon after the last stroke he heard heavy boots crossing the cement. A low knock came on the door. Guard Casey was in the doorway but there was no sign of the Sergeant. Guard Guider was the other guard.

  ‘You know why we’re here, Jim,’ Guard Casey said.

  ‘I know, Ned.’ Quickly the Guard read out the statement of arrest.

  ‘You’ll come with us, then?’

  ‘Sure I’ll come.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to do this but they’re the rules.’ He brought out a pair of bright handcuffs with a small green ribbon on the linking bar. Guider quickly handcuffed him to Casey and withdrew the key. The bar with the green ribbon kept the wrists apart but the hands and elbows touched. This caused them to walk stiffly and hesitantly and in step. The cement had been hosed clean but the people who worked for him were out of sight. The electric hum of the separators drowned their footsteps as they crossed to the squad car.

  In the barracks the Sergeant was waiting for him with a peace commissioner, a teacher from the other end of the parish, and they began committal proceedings at once. The Sergeant was grim-faced and inscrutable.

  ‘I’m sorry for that Sunday in Clones,’ the creamery manager blurted out in nervousness. ‘I only meant it as a day out together.’

  The grimness of the Sergeant’s face did not relent; it was as if he had never spoken. He was asked if he had a solicitor. He had none. Did he want to be represented? Did he need to be? he responded. It was not necessary at this stage, he was told. In that case, they could begin. Anything he said, he was warned, could be used against him. He would say nothing. Though it directly concerned him, it seemed to be hardly about him at all, and it did not take long. Tonight he’d spend in the barracks. The cell was already prepared for him. Tomorrow he’d be transferred to Mountjoy to await his trial. The proceedings for the present were at an end. There was a mild air of relief. He felt like a railway carriage that had been pushed by handdown rails into some siding. It suited him well enough. He had never been assertive and he had no hope of being acquitted.

  Less than a month before, he had bought stand tickets for the Ulster Final and had taken the Sergeant and Guard Casey to Clones. He already knew then that the end couldn’t be far off. It must have been cowardice and an old need to ingratiate. Now it was the only part of the whole business that made him cringe.

  They had set off in the Sergeant’s small Ford, Guard Casey sitting with the Sergeant in the front. They were both big men, Casey running to flesh, but the Sergeant retained some of an athlete’s spareness of feature. He had played three or four times for Cavan and had been on the fringe of the team for a few seasons several years before.

  ‘You were a terrible man to go and buy those stand tickets, Jim,’ Casey had said for the fifth time as the car travelled over the dusty white roads.

  ‘What’s terrible about it? Aren’t we all Ulster men even if we are stranded in the west? It’s a day out, a day out of all our lives. And the Sergeant here even played for Cavan.’

  ‘Once or twice. Once or twice. Trial runs. You could hardly call it played. I just wasn’t good enough.’

  ‘You were more than good enough by all accounts. There was a clique.’

  ‘You’re blaming the selectors now. The selectors had a job to do. They couldn’t pick everybody.’

  ‘More than me has said they were a clique. They had their favourites. You weren’t called “the boiler” for nothing.

  A car parked round the corner forced the Sergeant to swerve out into the road. Nothing was coming.

  ‘You’d think the car was specially parked there to deliver an accident.’

  ‘They’re all driving around in cars,’ Casey said, ‘but the mentality is still of the jennet and cart.’

  It had been a sort of suffering to keep the talk going, but silence was even worse. There were many small flowers in the grass margins of the roadside.

  They took their seats in the stand halfway through the minor game. There was one grace: though he came from close to Clones, there wasn’t a single person he knew sitting in any of the nearby seats. The minor game ended. Once the seniors came on the field he started at the sudden power and speed with which the ball was driven about. The game was never close. Cavan drew gradually ahead to win easily. Such was the air of unreality he felt, of three men watching themselves watch a game, that he was glad to buy oranges from a seller moving between seats, to hand the fruit around, to peel the skin away, to taste the bitter juice. Only once did he start and stir uncomfortably, when Guard Casey remarked about the powerful Cavan full-back who was roughing up the Tyrone forwards: ‘The Gunner is taking no prisoners today.’

  He was not so lucky on leaving the game. In the packed streets of the town a voice called out, ‘Is it not Jimmy McCarron?’ And at once the whole street seemed to know him. They stood in his path, put arms around him, drew him to t
he bars. ‘An Ulster Final, look at the evening we’ll have, and it’s only starting.’

  ‘Another time, Mick. Another time, Joe. Great to see you but we have to get back.’ He had pushed desperately on, not introducing his two companions.

  ‘You seem to be the most popular man in town,’ the Sergeant said sarcastically once they were clear.

  ‘I’m from round here.’

  ‘It’s better to be popular anyhow than buried away out of sight,’ Casey came to his defence.

  ‘Up to a point. Up to a point,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Everything has its point.’

  They stopped for tea at the Lawn Hotel in Belturbet. By slipping out to the reception desk while they were eating he managed to pay for the meal. Except for the Sergeant’s petrol he had paid for the entire day. This was brought up as they parted outside the barracks in the early evening.

  ‘It was a great day. We’ll have to make an annual day of the Ulster Final. But next year will be our day. Next year you’ll not be allowed spend a penny,’ the Sergeant said, but still he could see their satisfaction that the whole outing had cost them nothing.

  Now that the committal proceedings were at an end an air of uncertainty crept into the dayroom. Did they feel compromised by the day? He did not look at their faces. The door on the river had to be unlocked in order to allow the peace commissioner to leave and was again locked after he left. He caught the Sergeant and Guard Casey looking at one another.

  ‘You better show him his place,’ the Sergeant said.

  To the right of the door on the river was a big, heavy red door. It was not locked. Casey opened it slowly to show him his cell for the night.

  ‘It’s not great, Jimmy, but it’s as good as we could get it.’

  The cement floor was still damp from being washed. Above the cement was a mattress on a low platform of boards. There was a pillow and several heavy grey blankets on the mattress. High in the wall a narrow window was cut, a single steel bar in its centre.

  ‘It’s fine. It couldn’t be better.’

  ‘If you want anything at all, just bang or shout, Jim,’ and the heavy door was closed and locked. He heard bolts being drawn.