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

‘Oliver here will be going back to the uni in a few days. He’s doing chemical engineering. He got first-class honours last year, first in his class,’ he explained matter-of-factly, to the mother’s obvious pleasure and the discomfiture of the son. ‘The fees are stiff. They leave things fairly tight just now, but once he’s qualified he’ll make more in a few years than you and I will ever make in a whole bloody lifetime of teaching. These two great lumps are boarders in The Bower in Athlone. They have a weekend off.’ He spoke about his daughters as if he looked upon them already as other men’s future gardens.

‘We’d give you tea but the Archdeacon is expecting you. He wants you to have supper with him. I hope you like porridge. Whether you do or not, you better bolt it back like a man and say it was great. As long as you take to the stirabout he’ll see nothing much wrong with you. But were you to refuse it, all sorts of moral doubts might start to grow in his old head. He’s ninety-eight, the second oldest priest in the whole of Ireland, but he’ll tell you all this himself. I’d better leave you there now before he starts to worry. The one thing you have to remember is to address yourself like a boy to the stirabout.’

The wind had died a little outside. We walked up the wide street thronged with people in from the country for the late Saturday shopping. There were queues outside the butcher’s, the baker’s, within the chemist’s. Music came from some of the bars. Everywhere there was much greeting and stopping. Pale-faced children seemed to glide about between the shops in the shadow of their mothers. Some of them raised diffident hands or called, ‘Master Kennedy,’ to the big man by my side, and he seemed to know them all by name.

One rather well-dressed old man alone passed us in open hostility. It was in such marked contrast to the general friendliness that I asked, ‘What’s wrong with him ?’

‘He’s a teacher from out the country. They don’t like me. I’m not in their bloody union. Are you in the INTO by any chance?’

‘They offered us a special rate before leaving college. Everybody joined.’

‘That’s your own business, of course. I never found it much use,’ he said irritably.

He left me outside the heavy iron gates of the presbytery. ‘Call in on your way back to tell us how you got on. Then I’ll bring you down to your digs.’

A light above the varnished door shone on white gravel and the thick hedge of laurel and rhododendron that appeared to hide a garden or lawn. A housekeeper led me into the front room where a very old white-haired priest sat over a coal fire.

‘You’re from the west — a fine dramatic part of the country, but no fit place at all to live, no depth of soil. Have you ever heard of William Bulfin?’ he asked as soon as I was seated by his side.

‘ Rambles in Eirinn? ’ I remembered.

‘For my ordination I was given a present of a Pierce bicycle. I rode all around Ireland that summer on the new Pierce with a copy of the Rambles . It was a very weary-dreary business pedalling through the midlands, in spite of the rich land. I could feel my heart lift, though, when at last I got to the west. It’s still no place to live. Have you met Mr Kennedy?’

‘Yes, Father. He showed me here.’

‘Does he find you all right?’

‘I think so, Father.’

‘That’s good enough for me, then. Do you think you’ll be happy here?’

‘I think so, Father.’

‘I expect you’ll see out my time. I thought the last fellow would, but he left. I dislike changes. I’m ninety-eight years old. There’s only one priest older in the whole of Ireland, a Father Michael Kelly from the Diocese of Achonry. He’s a hundred-and-two. You might have noticed the fuss when he reached the hundred?’

‘I must have missed it, Father.’

‘I would have imagined that to be difficult. I thought it excessive, but I take a special interest in him. Kelly is the first name I look for every morning on the front of the Independent .’ He smiled slyly.

The housekeeper came into the room with a steaming saucepan, two bowls, a jug of milk and water, which she set on a low table between our chairs. Then she took a pair of glasses and a bottle of Powers from a press, and withdrew.

‘I don’t drink, Father,’ I said as he raised the bottle.

‘You’re wise. The heart doesn’t need drink at your age. I didn’t touch it till I was forty, but after forty I think every man should drink a little. The heart needs a jab or two every day to remind it of its business once it crosses forty. What do you think the business of the heart is?’

‘I suppose it has many businesses, Father.’

‘You’ll never be convicted on that answer, son, but it has only one main business. That’s to keep going. If it doesn’t do that all its other businesses can be forgotten about.’

He poured himself a very large whiskey, which he drank neat, and then added a smaller measure, filling the glass with water. The Principal had been right. The saucepan was full of steaming porridge when he lifted the lid. He ladled it into the bowls with a wooden spoon, leaving place enough in the bowl for milk and a sprinkling of sugar. It was all I could do to finish what was in the bowl. I noticed how remarkably steady his hand was as he brought the spoon to his lips.

‘If a man sticks to the stirabout he’s unlikely to go very far wrong,’ he concluded. ‘I hope you’ll be happy here. Mr Kennedy is a good man. He went on our side in that strike. He kept the school open. It was presumably good for the pupils. I think, though, it brought some trouble on himself. It’s seldom wise in the long run to go against your own crowd.’

He’d risen, laying his rug aside, but before I could leave he took me by the shoulder up to a large oil painting in a heavy gilt frame above the mantel. ‘Look at it carefully. What do you see?’

‘A tropical tree. It looks like an island.’

‘Look again. It’s a trick painting,’ he said, and when I could make nothing more of it he traced lines from the tree, which also depicted a melancholy military figure in a cocked hat. ‘Napoleon, on Elba,’ he laughed.

The Kennedys had invited me to their Sunday lunch the next day. Their kitchen was pleasant and extremely warm, the two girls setting the big table and smells of roasting chicken and apple stew coming from the black-leaded range. There was wine with the meal, a sweet white wine. Afterwards, the girls cleared the table and, asking permission, disappeared into the town. Oliver sat on in the room. Kennedy filled his wife’s glass to the brim with the last of the Sauterne and got himself a whiskey from the press in place of the wine.

‘You were just like he was twenty-one years ago. Your first school. Straight from the training college. Starting out,’ Mrs Kennedy said, her face pink with the wine and cooking.

‘Teachers’ jobs were hard come by in those days. Temporary assistant teacher for one year in the Marist Brothers in Sligo was my first job. There was pay but you could hardly call it pay. Not enough to keep a wren alive.’

‘It was the first of July. I remember it well. We had a bar and grocery by the harbour and sold newspapers. He came in for the Independent . He was tall then, with a thick head of brown hair. I know it was the first of July, but I forget the year.’

‘Nineteen thirty-three. It was the year I got out of college. I bought that Independent to see if there were any permanent jobs coming up in October.’

‘We were both only twenty. They told us to wait till we had saved some money, that we had plenty of time. But we couldn’t wait. My father gave us two rooms above the grocery part of the shop. Do you ever regret not waiting?’