John McGahern - The Dark

Never was so much work done, fences fixed and egg bushes rooted up, usually left to the winter to do. There was a savage delight in this power and animal strength, the total unconsciousness of the night afterwards. Sundays were spent at football in Charlie’s field, the same dogtiredness after, not a shadow of thought. He was a man. He was among men. He was able to take a man’s place.

What was strange to notice was that Mahoney was growing old. He’d stop and lean on the pick, panting, “Take it easy. No need to burst yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

The cattle got ringworm. They were driven into the cobbled yard, and the wooden gate reinforced with iron bars. Their hooves slid on the cobbles, their eyes great with fear, milling around. For the first time he was their match, he was no longer afraid of a crushing, he had strength enough. He’d coax near, then get an arm around the throats, keep his feet in the first rush till he’d wear them into a corner and grip the sensitive ridge of the nostril between finger and thumb to draw the head up and back, the whites of the eyes rolling, the mouth dripping. He’d hold the heaving flanks of the beast that way against the wall while Mahoney daubed green paint into the sores with a brush.

Mahoney was far the more cautious, a long remove from the days he used shout and bluster on these same cobbles, while the son stood terrified of the charging cattle with the box of green paint and the brush in his hand.

“Watch now. Better men than you got hurt. He’d crack your ribs like a shot against that wall. Maybe we better leave him, and take a chance he’ll get alright without the paint, he’s too strong,” he counselled now.

“No. I think we’ll get him. You can put the paint down, and push him into the wall once I catch him. I’ll be able to hold him once we get him against the wall.”

“But watch, watch, he’s as strong as a bull.”

The animal was caught and held. Mahoney daubed in the paint. The gate was opened. They all pushed out with the green paint on the sores.

“There’s nothing the two of us mightn’t do together,” Mahoney said as they went, blobs of sweat on his forehead, a weariness in the set of the body, the eyes hunted. He was growing old. Hard to imagine this was the same man who’d made the winters a nightmare over the squalid boots, the beatings and the continual complaining.

They threw away the old raincoats that had protected their clothes, and washed hands and arms in the same basin of hot water with Dettol to kill infection. He watched him there old, and remembered. The looking moved from the cruelty of detachment out into the incomprehension, no one finally knew anything about himself or anybody, even moods of hatred or contempt were passing, were of no necessary consequence.

THE EXAM RESULT ARRIVED THE FIRST WEEK IN AUGUST. DAYS of pestering the postman out on the road ended.

“Anything today?”

The voice shook but tried laughably not to betray its obvious care, it was an unconcerned question.

“No. Nothing today,” he cycled past the gate, amusement in his voice, mixture of contempt and the superiority of understanding, the green braid on his tunic.

The day he produced the letter he was forgotten, neither “Good-bye” nor “Thank you” nor anything. There was no need to open it to know what it was, the postmark was plain, Benedict’s hand. He just stared at it, the world reduced to its few square inches. He didn’t notice the postman noisily mount his bike again and cycle off. The problem was how to open it, it shook violently in his hands. He tore it clumsily at last and he had to rest it against the gate, his hands were shaking so much, in order to read. His eyes clutched up and down at the words and marks as if to gulp it with the one look into the brain.

It was only slowly it grew clear, the whole body trembling, he’d got the Scholarship, everything. The blue crest of the school crowned the notepaper, Presentation of the Child in the Temple. He started to tremble laughing, tears in the eyes, and then he rested against the gate, it couldn’t be true. He read it again.

“I got it. I got it,” he burst into the kitchen to Mahoney, hysterically laughing.

“What?”

“The Scholarship, all honours, everything.”

Mahoney seized it and read.

“Bejesus, you did it, you did it, strike me pink.”

The excitement was changing, he was crying, joy and generosity flowing towards the whole world. He wanted to catch hands and kiss everyone, and dance. He’d buy them presents, bring them places, they were all beautiful. They’d share joy, the world was a beautiful place, all its people beautiful.

“You did it. There’s marks for you. That’s what’ll show them who has the brains round here,” Mahoney shouted as he read.

“Congratulations,” he shook his hand in the manner of a drama. “Come and congratulate your brother.”

They came and shook his hand and smiled up at him with round eyes, and that was the first cooling. They looked at him as different, and he knew he was the same person as before, he’d been given a lucky grace, he wanted it to be theirs as much as his, but he was changed in their eyes, they’d not accept he was the same.

“We’ll go to town, the pair of us,’ Mahoney was shouting. “This is no day for work. A day like this won’t arrive many times in our lives.”

They dressed and went to town. Mahoney talked nonstop on the way, there was nothing to do but be silent and listen. The flood of generosity was choked. He was playing a part in Mahoney’s joy, he was celebrating Mahoney’s joy and not his own. He grew bored and restless but that was the way the day was going to go.

Let it happen, let it happen, and let it be over as quickly as possible.

“What we’ll have to get you first is clothes and shoes. You’re someone now. We can’t have you looking the part of the ragman.”

They went to Curleys, shop of the horror boots for winter.

“Can we help you?” after the shaking of hands.

“We want a whole new outfit for this fellow, he’s after getting first place in the University. Scholarship and all Honours in his Leaving. So we can’t have him going round like a ragman. Expense is no object. He’s going to be someone in the world, not like us.”

“Congratulations, it’s not every day we have a genius among us.”

He went red, such a swamp of embarrassment, he looked round frantic to hide first. Hatred swept against Mahoney: could he not shut his mouth. Three girls in the uniform of black skirt and cardigan were smiling from the women’s counter. He thought they were laughing at his cloddish father.

A grey suit was bought, black shoes, a white shirt, and matching wine tie.

“You must be proud today,” the manager said to the father. “You deserve great credit for the way you brought these children up.”

“We only try to do our best, what more can we do,” he diminished but he bloomed in the praise.

“There’s more than that to it. And now I want to make my own contribution to the happy occasion,” and he presented brown leather gloves with the compliments of the house.

“The best shop in the town is Curleys. We got everything we ever wanted here, the best shop in the town.”

“We do our best. We value and appreciate our good customers,” the manager was pleased too before his staff and came smiling with them to the door.

“The next time it’ll be for his father he’ll be buying for, we hope, and driving round in a car,” Mahoney joked as he backed through the door, so absorbed that he almost flattened a woman passing with parcels. It brought him slightly down to earth, he restored a fallen parcel, and said, “Sorry,” to her murderous stare and mutterings.