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

I heard the clear blows of a hammer on stone. My father was sledging stones that had fallen from the archway where once the workmen’s bell had hung. Some of the stones had been part of the arch and were quite beautiful. There seemed no point in breaking them up. I moved closer, taking care to stay hidden in the shade of the beeches.

As the sledge rose, the watch glittered on my father’s wrist. I followed it down, saw the shudder that ran through his arms as the metal met the stone. A watch was always removed from the wrist before such violent work. I waited. In this heat he could not keep up such work for long. He brought the sledge down again and again, the watch glittering, the shock shuddering through his arms. When he stopped, before he wiped the sweat away, he put the watch to his ear and listened intently. What I’d guessed was certain now. From the irritable way he threw the sledge aside, it was clear that the watch was still running.

That afternoon I helped him fill the tar barrel with water for spraying the potatoes, though he made it clear he didn’t want help. When he put the bag of blue stone into the barrel to steep, he thrust the watch deep into the water before my eyes.

‘I’m going back to Dublin tomorrow,’ I said.

‘I thought you were coming for two weeks. You always stayed two weeks before.’

‘There’s no need for me now.’

‘It’s your holiday. You’re as well off here as by the sea. It’s as much of a change and far cheaper.’

‘I meant to tell you before, and should have but didn’t. I am married now.’

‘Tell me more news,’ he said with an attempt at cool surprise, but I saw by his eyes that he already knew. ‘We heard but we didn’t like to believe it. It’s a bit late in the day for formal engagements, never mind invitations. I suppose we weren’t important enough to be invited.’

‘There was no one at the wedding but ourselves. We invited no one, neither her people nor mine.’

‘Well, I suppose it was cheaper that way,’ he agreed.

‘When will you spray?’

‘I’ll spray tomorrow,’ he said, and we left the blue stone to steep in the barrel of water.

With relief, I noticed he was no longer wearing the watch, but the feeling of unease was so great in the house that after dinner I went outside. It was a perfect moonlit night, the empty fields and beech trees and walls in clear yellow outline. The night seemed so full of serenity that it brought the very ache of longing for all of life to reflect its moonlit calm, but I knew too well it neither was nor could be. It was a dream of death.

I went idly towards the orchard, and as I passed the tar barrel I saw a thin fishing line hanging from a part of the low yew branch down into the barrel. I heard the ticking even before the wrist watch came up tied to the end of the line. What shocked me was that I felt neither surprise nor shock.

I felt the bag that we’d left to steep earlier in the water. The blue stone had all melted down. It was a barrel of pure poison, ready for spraying.

I listened to the ticking of the watch on the end of the line in silence before letting it drop back into the barrel. The poison had already eaten into the casing of the watch. The shining rim and back were no longer smooth. It could hardly run much past morning.

The night was so still that the shadows of the beeches did not waver on the moonlit grass, seemed fixed like a leaf in rock. On the white marble the gold watch must now be lying face upwards in this same light, silent or running. The ticking of the watch down in the barrel was so completely muffled by the spray that only by imagination could it be heard. A bird moved in some high branch, but afterwards the silence was so deep it began to hurt, and the longing grew for the bird or anything to stir again.

I stood in that moonlit silence as if waiting for some word or truth, but none came, none ever came. Only what was increased or diminished as it changed, became only what is, becoming again what was even faster than the small second hand endlessly circling in the poison.

Suddenly, the lights in the house went out. Before going into the house, I drew the watch up again out of the barrel by the line and listened to it tick, now purely amused by the expectation it renewed — that if I continued to listen to the ticking some word or truth might come. And when I finally lowered the watch back down into the poison, I did it so carefully that no ripple or splash disturbed the quiet, and time, hardly surprisingly, was still running; time that did not have to run to any conclusion.

‘I want to ask you one very small last favour.’

‘What is it?’

‘Will you stay behind for just five minutes after I leave?’

It was the offer of the blindfold, to accept the darkness for a few moments before it finally fell.

‘If we leave together we’ll just start to argue again and it’s no use. You know it’s over. It’s been over for a long time now. Will you please stay five minutes?’ She put her gloved hand on my arm as she rose. ‘Just this last time.’

She turned and walked away. I was powerless to follow. She did not once look back. The door swung in the emptiness after she had gone. I saw the barman looking at me strangely but I did not care. The long hand of the clock stood at two minutes to eight. It did not seem to move at all. She was gone, slipping further out of reach with every leaden second, and I was powerless to follow.

‘A small Jameson. With water,’ I said to the barman. As I sipped the whiskey, the whole absurdity of my situation came with a rush of anger. It was over. She was gone. Nothing said or done would matter any more, and yet I was sitting like a fool because she’d simply asked me to. Without glancing at the clock, I rose and headed towards the door. Outside she was nowhere in sight.

I could see down on the city, its maze of roads already lighted in the still, white evening, each single road leading in hundreds of directions. I started to run, but then had to stop, realizing I didn’t know where to run. If there were an instrument like radar … but that might show her half-stripped in some car … her pale shoulders gleaming as she slipped out of her clothes in a room in Rathmines …

I stared at the street. Cars ran. Buses stopped. Lights changed. Shop windows stayed where they were. People answered to their names. All the days from now on would have to begin without her. The one thing I couldn’t bear was to face back to the room, the room that had seen such a tenuous happiness.

I went into the Stag’s Head and then O’Neills. Both bars were crowded. There was no one there that I knew. I passed slowly through without trying to order anything. The barmen were too busy to call out. I moved to the bars off Grafton Street, and at the third bar I saw the Mulveys before I heard my name called. It was Claire Mulvey who had called my name. Paddy Mulvey was reading a book, his eyes constantly flickering from the page to the door, but as soon as he heard my name called his eyes returned fixedly to the page. They were sitting between the pillars at the back. Eamonn Kelly appeared to be sitting with them.

‘We thought you were avoiding us,’ Claire Mulvey said as we shook hands. Her strained, nervous features still showed frayed remnants of beauty. ‘We haven’t seen you for months.’

‘For God’s sake, isn’t it a free country?’ Paddy Mulvey said brightly. ‘Hasn’t the man a right to do his own things in his own way?’

‘Blackguard,’ Eamonn Kelly said gravely, his beautiful, pale face relaxing in a wintry smile.

‘Why are you not drinking?’ Empty half-glasses stood in front of them on the table.

‘I’m afraid we’re suffering from that old perplexity,’ Mulvey said. ‘And we’ve been waiting for Halloran. He was supposed to be here more than an hour ago. He owes us a cheque. He even left us a hostage for reassurance.’ He pointed to a brown leather suitcase upright against the pillar.