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

I saw a look pass between my father and stepmother before he said, ‘What good would it be to you?’

‘No good. Just a keepsake. I’ll get you a good new watch in its place. I often see watches in the duty-free airports.’ My work often took me outside the country.

‘I don’t need a watch,’ he said, and pulled himself up from his chair.

Rose cast me a furtive look, much the same look that had passed a few moments before between her and my father. ‘Maybe your father wants to keep the watch,’ it pleaded, but I ignored it.

‘Didn’t the watch once belong to your father?’ I asked as he shuffled towards his room, but the only answer he made was to turn and yawn back before continuing the slow, exaggerated shuffle towards his room.

When the train pulled into Amiens Street Station, to my delight I saw her outside the ticket barrier, in the same tweed suit she’d worn the Saturday morning we met in Grafton Street. I could tell that she’d been to the hairdresser, but there were specks of white paint on her hands.

‘Did you tell them that we’re to be married?’ she asked as we left the station.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It never came up. And you, did you write home?’

‘No. In fact, I drove down last weekend and told them.’

‘How did they take it?’

‘They seemed glad. You seemed to have made a good impression.’ She smiled. ‘As I guessed, Mother is quite annoyed that it’s not going to be a big do.’

‘You won’t change our plans because of that.’

‘Of course not. She’s not much given to change herself, except to changing other people so that they fit in with her ideas.’

‘This fell my way at last,’ I said and showed her the silent watch. ‘I’ve always wanted it. If we believed in signs it would seem life is falling into our hands at last.’

‘And not before our time, I think I can risk adding.’

We were married that October by a Franciscan in their church on the quay, with two vergers as witnesses, and we drank far too much wine at lunch afterwards in a new restaurant that had opened in Lincoln Court. Staggering home in the late afternoon, I saw some people in the street smile at my attempt to lift her across the step. We did not even hear the bells closing the Green.

It was dark when we woke, and she said, ‘I have something for you,’ taking a small, wrapped package from the bedside table.

‘You know we promised not to give presents,’ I said.

‘I know but this is different. Open it. Anyhow, you said you didn’t believe in signs.’

It was the gold watch. I held it to my ear. It was running perfectly. The small second hand was circling endlessly low down on the face. The blue hands pointed to past midnight.

‘Did it cost much?’

‘No. Very little, but that’s not your business.’

‘I thought the parts had to be specially made.’

‘That wasn’t true. They probably never even asked.’

‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘Now I’m hoping to see you wear it,’ she laughed.

I did not wear it. I left it on the mantel. The gold and white face and delicate blue hands looked very beautiful to me on the white marble. It gave me a curious pleasure mixed with guilt to wind it and watch it run; and the following spring, coming from a conference in Ottawa, I bought an expensive modern watch in the duty-free shop of Montreal Airport. It was guaranteed for five years, and was shockproof, dustproof, waterproof.

‘What do you think of it?’ I asked her when I returned to Dublin. ‘I bought it for my father.’

‘Well, it’s no beauty, but my mother would certainly approve of it. It’s what she’d describe as serviceable .’

‘It was expensive enough.’

‘It looks expensive. You’ll bring it when you go down for the hay?’

‘It’ll probably be my last summer with them at the hay,’ I said apologetically. ‘Won’t you change your mind and come down with me?’

She shook her head. ‘He’d probably say I look fifty now.’ She was as strong-willed as the schoolteacher mother she disliked, and I did not press. She was with child and looked calm and lovely.

‘What’ll they do about the hay when they no longer have you to help them?’ she said.

‘What does anybody do? Do without me. Stop. Get it done by contract. They have plenty of money. It’ll just be the end of something that has gone on for a very long time.’

‘That it certainly has.’

I came by train at the same time in July as I’d come every summer, the excitement tainted with melancholy that it’d probably be the last summer I would come. I had not even a wish to see it to its natural end any more. I had come because it seemed less violent to come than to stay away, and I had the good new modern watch to hand over in place of the old gold. The night before, at dinner, we had talked about buying a house with a garden out near the strand in Sandymount. Any melancholy I was feeling lasted only until I came in sight of the house.

All the meadows had been cut and saved, the bales stacked in groups of five or six and roofed with green grass. The Big Meadow beyond the beeches was completely clean, the bales having been taken in. Though I had come intending to make it my last summer at the hay, I now felt a keen outrage that it had been ended without me. Rose and my father were nowhere to be seen.

‘What happened?’ I asked when I found them at last, weeding the potato ridge one side of the orchard.

‘The winter feeding got too much for us,’ my father said.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

My father and Rose exchanged looks, and my father spoke as if he was delivering a prepared statement.

‘We didn’t like to. And anyhow we thought you’d want to come, hay or no hay. It’s more normal to come for a rest instead of just to kill yourself at the old hay. And indeed there’s plenty else for you to do if you have a mind to do it. I’ve taken up the garden again myself.’

‘Anyhow, I’ve brought these.’ I handed Rose the box of chocolates and bottle of scent, and gave my father the watch.

‘What’s this for?’

‘It’s the watch I told you I’d get in place of the old watch.’

‘I don’t need a watch.’

‘I got it anyhow. What do you think of it?’

‘It’s ugly,’ he said, turning it over.

‘It was expensive enough.’ I named the price. ‘And that was duty free.’

‘They must have seen you coming, then.’

‘No. It’s guaranteed for five years. It’s dustproof, shockproof, waterproof.’

‘The old gold watch — do you still have that?’ He changed after silence.

‘Of course.’

‘Did you ever get it working?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘But it’s sort of nice to have.’

‘That doesn’t make much sense to me.’

‘Well, you’ll find that the new watch is working well anyway.’

‘What use have I for time here any more?’ he said, but I saw him start to wind and examine the new watch, and he was wearing it at breakfast the next morning. He seemed to want it to be seen as he buttered toast and reached across for milk and sugar.

‘What did you want to get up so early for?’ he said to me. ‘You should have lain in and taken a good rest when you had the chance.’

‘What will you be doing today?’ I asked.

‘Not much. A bit of fooling around. I might get spray ready for the potatoes.’

‘It’d be an ideal day for hay,’ I said, looking out the window on the fields. The morning was as blue and cool as the plums still touched with dew down by the hayshed. There was a white spider webbing over the grass. As the day grew, I found myself stirring uncomfortably in my suit — missing my old loose clothes, the smell of diesel in the meadow, the blades of grass shivering as they fell, the long teeth of the raker kicking the hay into rows, all the jangle and bustle and busyness of the meadows.