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

‘I’ll get the drinks,’ I offered.

‘Halloran went off with a boy. I’ve been telling them he’ll not be back,’ Eamonn Kelly volunteered.

I got four pints and four whiskeys from the bar.

‘I should thank you for this,’ Eamonn Kelly said as he lifted his whiskey. ‘But after careful consideration have come down against it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve decided you’re a blackguard.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because one must have some fixed principles. I’ve decided you are a blackguard. That’s an end of it. There is no appeal.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Mulvey said. ‘You’re not drunk enough for that yet. Here’s health.’

‘Good luck,’ Claire Mulvey said.

‘What are you reading?’

‘Another slim volume. I’m writing it up for Halloran,’ and he started to speak of the book in a tone of spirited mockery.

I tried to listen but found the arid, mocking words unbearable. Nothing lived. Then I found myself turning towards a worse torture, to all I wanted not to think about.

She had asked me to a dinner in her sister’s house a few days before Christmas. We’d met inside a crowded GPO. She was wearing a pale raincoat with the detachable fur collar she wore with so many coats. Outside in O’Connell Street the wind was cold, spitting rain, and we’d stood in a doorway as we waited for a bus to take us to the house in the suburbs.

The house her sister lived in was a small semi-detached in a new estate: a double gate, a garage, a piece of lawn hemmed in with concrete, a light above the door. The rooms were small, carpeted. A coal fire burned in the tiled fireplace of the front room.

Her sister was as tall as she, black-haired, and beautiful, pregnant with her first child. Her husband was small, energetic, and taught maths in a nearby school.

The bottles of wine we’d brought were handed over. Glasses of whiskey were poured. We touched the glasses in front of the coal fire. They’d gone to a great deal of trouble with the meal. There were small roast potatoes, peas, breadcrumb stuffing with the roast turkey. Brandy was poured over the plum pudding and lit. Some vague unease curdled the food and cheer in that small front room, was sharpened by the determined gaiety. It was as if we were looking down a long institutional corridor; the child in the feeding chair could be seen already, the next child, and the next, the postman, the milkman, the van with fresh eggs and vegetables from the country, the tired clasp over the back of the hand to show tenderness as real as the lump in the throat, the lawnmowers in summer, the thickening waists. It hardly seemed necessary to live it.

‘What did you think of them?’ she’d asked as she took my arm in the road outside.

‘I thought they were very nice. They went to a great deal of trouble.’

‘What did you think of the house?’

‘It’s not my kind of house. It’s the sort of house that would drive me crackers.’

‘What sort of house would you like?’

‘Something bigger than that. Something with a bit more space. An older house. Nearer the city.’

‘Excuse me,’ she said with pointed sarcasm as she withdrew her arm.

I should have said, ‘It’s a lovely house. Any house with you would be a lovely house,’ and caught and kissed her in the wind and rain. And it was true. Any house with her would have been a lovely house. I had been the fool to think that I could stand outside life. I would agree to anything now. I would not even ask for love. If she stayed, love might come in its own time, I reasoned blindly.

‘Do you realize how rich the English language is, that it should have two words, for instance, such as “comprehension” and “apprehension”, so subtly different in shading and yet so subtly alike? Has anything like that ever occurred to you?’ This was Mulvey now.

‘No. I hadn’t realized.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t. And I’d rather comprehend another drink.’

‘Comprehension. Apprehension,’ Eamonn Kelly started to say as I went to get the drinks. ‘I’ll apprehend you for a story. An extraordinarily obscene story.’

‘Jesus,’ Mulvey groaned.

‘I hope it’s not long,’ Claire Mulvey said. ‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked as he began. ‘We don’t have to listen to that. Those stories are all the same.’

‘I got mixed up with a girl.’

‘Why didn’t you bring her here? You should at least have given us the chance to look her over.’

‘She wouldn’t like it here. Anyhow it’s over now.’

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said.

‘Is he?’ Eamonn Kelly shouted, annoyed that we hadn’t listened to the story he’d been telling.

‘Is he what?’ Mulvey asked.

‘Is he here? Am I here?’

‘Unfortunately you’re here,’ Mulvey replied.

‘Hypocrites. Liars.’

‘Lies are the oil of the social machinery.’

‘Don’t mind him,’ Mulvey said.

‘Lies,’ he ignored. ‘She ate green plums. She was pregnant. That’s why she’s not here. Blackguard.’

‘This is terrible,’ Mulvey said.

The anxiety as to where she was at this moment struck without warning. ‘Did you ever wish for some device like radar that could track a person down at any given moment, light up where they were, like on a screen?’ I turned to Mulvey.

‘That would be a nightmare.’ Mulvey surprisingly rallied to the question, his interest caught. ‘I was never very worried about what other people were up to. My concern has always been that they might discover what I was up to.’

‘Then you’ve never loved,’ Eamonn Kelly said grandly. ‘I know what he’s talking about. There were times I too wished for radar.’

‘I wouldn’t mind putting radar on Halloran just now. To get him to give me that cheque, to give him back his damned suitcase. We’ve ferried the thing around for two whole days now.’ Mulvey turned aside to complain.

‘You must have wanted to know sometimes what I was doing,’ Claire Mulvey said.

‘Never.’

‘Even if that is true, I don’t think you should say it.’

‘That’s precisely why it should be said. Because it is true. Why else should anything be said?’

They started to quarrel. I bought a last round. It was getting close to closing time. Eamonn Kelly had begun an energetic conversation with himself, accompanied by equally vigorous gestures, a dumbshow of removing hat and gloves, handshakes, movements forward and back, a great muttering of some complicated sentence, replacing of hat and gloves. The Mulveys had retreated into stewing silences. I was bewildered as to what I was doing here but was even blinder still about possible alternatives. A whole world had been cut from under me.

‘Do you have enough for a sugar bag?’ Mulvey suddenly asked. ‘We could go back to my place.’

‘I have plenty.’

‘I’ll make it up to you as soon as I see Halloran.’

The sugar bags were strong grey paper bags used to carry out bottles of stout. They usually held a dozen. I bought three. Eamonn Kelly assumed he was going back to Mulvey’s with us, for he offered to carry one of the bags. Claire Mulvey carried Halloran’s suitcase. There were many drunks on the street. One made a playful pass at the sugar bag Mulvey carried, and got berated, the abuse too elevated and fluent to get us into trouble. We could not have looked too sober ourselves, for I noticed a pair of guards stand to watch our progress with the case and sugar bags. Mulvey’s house was in a terrace along the canal. A young moon lay in a little water between the weeds and cans and bottles.

‘ The wan moon is setting on the still wave ,’ Eamonn Kelly took up from the reflection as he swayed along with a sugar bag.