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

‘Well, I’m the law in these parts, for what it’s worth. And there’s the CWA party tonight. You could play there. It’d give the ignoramuses there a glimpse past their noses to hear playing the like of the Paganini. You could stay the night here in the barracks, there’s tons of room.’

‘No. I have to drive to Galway tonight.’

‘Well, what’s one man’s poison. I was never a one for the forcing but that’s no reason to stint my own hand,’ he said as he filled his own glass again.

‘It’s your turn now to play, those lovely jigs and reels,’ the Surveyor demanded.

‘Not since the dances have I played, not for ages.’

‘Can’t you take the case down anyhow? You never know where the inspiration may come from.’ The Surveyor smiled.

The case lay on the long mantel above the fire between a tea-box and a little red lamp that burned before a picture of the Sacred Heart in a crib bordered by fretted shamrocks. Clumsily he got it down. It was thick with dust. His hands left tracks on the case, and the ashes or dust scattered in a cloud when he started to beat it clean with an old towel. The Surveyor coughed in the dust and the Sergeant had to go to the scullery to wash his hands in the iron basin before the mirror. When he came in and finally got the case open, one string of the plain little fiddle was broken. The bow had obviously not been used for years, it was so slack.

‘It’s no Strad, but it would play after proper repairing. It would be a fine pastime for you on the long nights.’

‘Play to old deaf Biddy, is it now. It had a sweet note too in its day though, and I had no need of the old whiskey to hurry the time then, sitting on the planks between the barrels, fiddling away as they danced past while they shouted up to me, “Rise it, Jimmy. More power to your elbow, Jimmy Boy!”’

Going back with the fellows over the fields in the morning as the cold day came up, he remembered; and life was as full of promise as the smile the girl with cloth fuchsia bells in her dark hair threw him as she danced past where he played on the planks. The Surveyor looked from the whiskey bottle to the regret on the sunken face with careless superiority and asked, ‘Would you like me to play one of the old tunes?’

‘I’d like that very much.’

‘Is there anything in particular?’

‘“The Kerry Dances.”’

‘Can you hum the opening part?’

The Sergeant hummed it and confidently the Surveyor took up the playing. ‘That’s it, that’s it.’ The Sergeant excitedly beat time with his boots till a loud hammering came on the door.

‘Oh my God, it’s that woman again.’ He pushed his hand through his grey hair, having to go to the scullery door to draw back the bolt.

She was in such a state when she came in that she did not seem to notice the Surveyor playing. ‘Wet to the skin I got. And I tauld him his ham was crawling, or if it wasn’t crawling it was next door to crawling if I have a nose. Eight-and-six he wanted,’ she shouted.

The Surveyor broke off his playing. He watched her shake the rain from her coat and scarf.

‘Yous will have to do with bacon and eggs, and that’s the end all,’ she shouted.

‘A simple cup of tea would do me very well,’ the Surveyor said.

‘But you’ve had nothing for the inner man,’ the Sergeant said as he filled his own glass from the whiskey bottle.

‘I’ll have to have a proper dinner this evening and I’d rather not eat now.’

‘You can’t be even tempted to have a drop of this stuff itself?’ He offered the bottle.

‘No thanks, I’ll just finish this. Is there anything else you’d like me to play for you?’

‘“Danny Boy”, play “Danny Boy”, then.’

‘Is it bacon and eggs, then?’ Biddy shouted.

‘Tea and brown bread,’ the Sergeant groaned as he framed silently the speech on his lips.

‘Tea and brown bread,’ she repeated, and he nodded as he gulped the whiskey.

The Surveyor quietly moved into ‘Danny Boy’, but as the rattle of a kettle entered ‘When Summer’s in the Meadows’, his irritated face above the lovely old violin was plainly fighting to hold its concentration as he played.

‘Maybe we might be able to persuade you to stay the night yet after all?’ the Sergeant pressed with the fading strength of the whiskey while they drank sobering tea at the table with the knitting-machine clamped to its end. ‘It’d be a great charity. Never before would they have heard playing the like of what you can play. It might occupy their minds with something other than pigs and hens and bullocks for once. Biddy could make up the spare room for you in no time and you could have a good drink without worry of the driving.’

‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to stay the night and play.’

‘That’s great. You can stay, then?’

‘No, no. It’s unfortunately impossible. I have to be at the Seapoint Hotel in Galway at six.’

‘You could use the barrack phone to cancel.’

‘No. Every time I get a case in the west I stay at the Seapoint. Eileen O’Neill is manageress there, and she is the best accompanist I know. She could have been a concert pianist. She has already taken the evening off. I’ll have a bath when I get to the hotel and change into the evening suit you saw hanging in the car. We’ll have dinner together and afterwards we’ll play. We’ve been studying Kreisler and I can hardly wait to see how some of those lovely melodies play. Some day you must meet her. This evening she’ll probably wear the long dress of burgundy velvet with the satin bow in her hair as she plays.’

‘I’m sorry I tried to force you. If I’d known I wouldn’t have tried to get the CWA function between you and that attraction.’

‘Otherwise I’d be delighted. I consider it an honour to be invited. But I suppose,’ he said, glancing at his watch, ‘that if I intend to be there by six I better be making the road shorter.’ He wrapped the violin in its frayed black silk and carefully returned it to its case. ‘What’s nice, though, is it’s not really goodbye,’ he said as they shook hands. ‘We’ll meet on the court day. And I can’t thank you enough for those drawings you made of the accident.’

‘They’re for nothing, and a safe journey.’

At the door the Surveyor paused, intending to say goodbye to Biddy, but she was so intent on adjusting the needles of the machine to turn the heel of the sock that he decided not to bring his leaving to her notice.

*

The lighting of the oil-lamp dispelled the increasing blood-red gloom of the globe before the Sacred Heart after he had gone, as dusk deepened into night and Biddy placed suit and white shirt and tie on the chair before the fire of flickering ash.

‘Will you be wanting anything to ate before the Function?’ she shouted.

‘No, Biddy.’ He shook his head.

‘Well, your clothes will be aired for you there and then when you want to change out of your uniform.’

‘Thanks, Biddy,’ he said.

‘I’ll leave your shoes polished by the table. I’ll not wait up for you as no doubt it’ll be the small hours. I’ll put your hot waterjar in the bed.’

‘Thanks, thanks, Biddy.’

Quietly he rose and replaced the cheap fiddle in the case, fingering the broken string before adding the slack bow. He shut the case and replaced it between the tea-box and the red globe of the Sacred Heart lamp on the mantel.

The smell of porter and whiskey, blue swirls of cigarette smoke, pounding of boots on the floorboards as they danced, the sudden yahoos as they swung, and the smile of the girl with the cloth fuchsia bells in her hair as he played, petrified for ever in his memory even as his stumblings home over the cold waking fields.