John McGahern - Creatures of the Earth - New and Selected Stories

‘But they are more beautiful. Dog rose, wild woodbine, buttercup, daisy …’

He heard his own protest. It was in a hotel that they used to go to every summer on the Atlantic, a small hotel where you could read after dinner without fear of a rising roar from the bar beginning to outrival the Atlantic by ten o’clock.

‘And, no doubt, the little rose of Scotland, sharp and sweet and breaks the heart,’ he heard his friend quote maliciously. ‘And it’s not the point. The reason that names of flowers must be in Latin is that when flower lovers meet they know what they are talking about, no matter whether they’re French or Greeks or Arabs. They have a universal language.’

‘I prefer the humble names, no matter what you say.’

‘Of course you do. And it’s parochial sentimentalists like yourself who prefer the smooth sowthistle to Sonchus oleraceus that’s the whole cause of your late lamented Mass in Latin disappearing. I have no sympathy with you. You people tire me.’

The memory of that truculent argument dispelled his annoyance, as its simple logic had once taken his breath away, but he was curiously tired after the vividness of the recall. It was only by a sheer act of will, sometimes having to count the words, that he was able to finish his office. ‘I know one thing, Peter Joyce. I know that I know nothing,’ he murmured when he finished. But when he looked at the room about him he could hardly believe it was so empty and dead and dry, the empty chair where she should be sewing, the oaken table with the scattered books, the clock on the mantel. Wildly and aridly he wanted to curse, but his desire to curse was as unfair as life. He had not wanted it.

Then, quietly, he saw that he had a ghost all right, one that he had been walking around with for a long time, a ghost he had not wanted to recognize — his own death. He might as well get to know him well. It would never leave now and had no mortal shape. Absence does not cast a shadow.

All that was there was the white light of the lamp on the open book, on the white marble; the brief sun of God on beechwood, and the sudden light of that glistening snow, and the timeless mourners moving towards the yews on Killeelan Hill almost thirty years ago. It was as good a day as any, if there ever was a good day to go.

Somewhere, outside this room that was an end, he knew that a young man, not unlike he had once been, stood on a granite step and listened to the doorbell ring, smiled as he heard a woman’s footsteps come down the hallway, ran his fingers through his hair, and turned the bottle of white wine he held in his hands completely around as he prepared to enter a pleasant and uncomplicated evening, feeling himself immersed in time without end.

The wind blew the stinging rain from the Gut, where earlier in the bright weather of the summer the Sergeant had sat in the tarred boat, anchored by a rope to an old Ford radiator that clung to the weeds outside the rushes, and watched taut line after taut line cut like cheesewire through the water as hooked roach after hooked roach made a last surge towards the freedom of the open lake before landing slapping on the floorboards. The wind blew the rain from the Gut against the black limestone of the Quarry, where on the wet tar, its pools ruffling in the wet wind, the Sergeant and the young State Surveyor measured the scene of the road accident, both with their collars up and hatted against the rain, the black plastic chinstrap a shining strip on the Sergeant’s jaw. ‘What age was he?’ the Surveyor asked, as he noted the last measurement in his official notebook and put the tapewheel in his pocket.

‘Eighteen. Wheeling his bicycle up the hill on his way to Carrick, apparently for a haircut, when bang — into the next world via the bonnet, without as much as by your leave.’

‘Will you be able to get manslaughter? From the measurements she wouldn’t appear to have a leg to stand on.’

‘Not a snowballs’s chance in hell. The family’s too well in. You see the wooden cross on the wall there his parents put up, two sticks no more, and they’re already complaining: the poor woman has to pass it twice a day on the way to her school and back, and the cross disturbs her, brings back memories, when bygones should be let to be bygones. Her defence is that the sun blinded her as she came round the Quarry. She’ll lose her licence for six months and there’ll be an order from the bench for the bend to be properly signposted.’

The Surveyor whistled as he turned towards his car in the forecourt of the Quarry, his back to the rain sweeping from the mouth of the Gut.

‘They’re poor, his parents, then?’

‘As mountain snipe.’

‘Fortunately, Sergeant, you and I don’t have to concern ourselves with the justice or injustice. Only with the accurate presentation of the evidence. And I have to thank you for those drawings. They are as near professional as makes no difference. I wish all my jobs could be made as easy.’

‘I was good at figures at school,’ the Sergeant said awkwardly.

‘Why don’t you let me drive you back in the rain?’

‘There’s the bike.’

‘That’s no problem. I can dump it on the back.’

An evening suit hung in the back of the car, a scarf of white silk draped round the shoulders. On the seat lay an old violin-case.

‘You play the fiddle?’ the Sergeant noticed, glad to be in out of the rain beating on the windscreen.

‘Indeed I do. The violin travels with me everywhere. Do you have much taste for music?’

‘When I was young. At the dances. “Rakes of Mallow”. “Devil Among the Tailors”, jigs and reels.’

‘I had to choose once, when I was at university, between surveying and a career in music. I’m afraid I chose security.’

‘We all have to eat.’

‘Anyhow, I’ve never regretted it, except in the usual sentimental moments. In fact, I think if I had to depend on it for my daily bread it might lose half its magic.’

‘Is it old, the fiddle? The case looks old.’

‘Very old, but I have had it only four years. It has its story. I’m afraid it’s a longish story.’

‘I’d like to hear it.’

‘I was in Avignon in France an evening an old Italian musician was playing between the café tables, and the moment I heard its tone I knew I’d have to have it. I followed him from café to café until he’d finished for the evening, and then invited him to join me over a glass of wine. Over the wine I asked him if he’d sell. First he refused. Then I asked him to name some price he couldn’t afford not to take. I’m afraid to tell you the price, it was so high. I tried to haggle but it was no use. The last thing he wanted was to sell, but because of his family he couldn’t afford to refuse that price if I was prepared to pay it. With the money he could get proper medical treatment — I couldn’t completely follow his French — for his daughter, who was consumptive or something, and he’d do the best he could about the cafés with an ordinary violin. I’m afraid I paid up on the spot, but the experts who have examined it since say it was dead cheap at the price, that it might even be a genuine Stradivarius.’

Streets of Avignon, white walls of the royal popes in the sun, glasses of red wine and the old Italian musician playing between the café tables in the evening, a girl dying of consumption, and the sweeping rain hammering on the windscreen.

‘It was in Avignon, wasn’t it, if I have the old church history right,’ the Sergeant said slowly, ‘that those royal popes had their palaces in the schism? Some of them, by all accounts, were capable of a fandango or two besides their Hail Marys.’

‘The papal palaces are still there. Avignon is wonderful. You must go there. Some of those wonderful Joe Walsh Specials put it within all our reaches. The very sound of the name makes me long for summer.’