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

‘We wouldn’t have saved anyhow. There was nothing to save. And we had those years.’

I felt like an intruder. Their son sat there, shamed and fascinated, unable to cry, stop, or tear himself away.

‘Those two rooms were rotten with damp, and when there were storms you should have heard the damned panes. You could have wallpapered the rooms with the number of letters beginning “The Manager regrets” that came through the letter-box that winter. Oliver here was on the way.’

‘Those two rooms were happiness,’ she said, lifting the glass of sweet wine to her lips, while her son writhed with unease on the sofa.

‘We could get no job, and then I was suddenly offered three at the same time. It’s always the same. You either get more than you want or you get nothing. We came here because the house went with the school. It meant a great deal in those days. It still does us no harm.’

*

I walked with Kennedy to the school on the Monday. He introduced me to the classes I was to teach. We walked together on the concrete during the mid-morning break. Eagerly, he started to talk as we walked up and down among the playing children. The regulation ten minutes ran to twenty before he rang the bell.

‘They’re as well playing in this weather. The inspectors never try to catch me out. They know the work gets done.’

It was the same at the longer lunchtime, the talk veering again to the early days of his marriage.

‘I used to go back to those two rooms for lunch. We’d just go straight to bed, grabbing a sandwich on the way out. Sometimes we had it off against the edge of the table. It was a great feeling afterwards, walking about with the Brothers, knowing that they’d never have it in the whole of their lives.’

I walked with him on that concrete in total silence. I must have been close to the perfect listener for this excited, forceful man. No one had ever spoken to me like this before. I didn’t know what to say. The children milled about us in the weak sun. Sometimes I shivered at the premonition that days like this might be a great part of the rest of my life: I had dreamed once that through teaching I would help make the world a better place.

‘What made you take up teaching?’ he asked. ‘I know the hours are good enough, and there’s the long holidays, but what the hell good is it without money?’

‘I don’t know why,’ I answered. ‘Some notion of service … of doing good.’

‘It’s easy to see that you’re young. Teaching is a lousy, tiring old job, and it gets worse as you get older. A new bunch comes at you year after year. They stay the same but you start to go down. You’ll not get thanked for service in this world. There were no jobs when I was young. It was considered a bloody miracle to have any sort of a job with a salary. If I was in your boots now I’d do something like dentistry or engineering, even if I had to scrape for the money.’

The time had already gone several minutes past the lunchtime. The children were whirling about us on the concrete in loud abandon, for them the minutes of play stolen from the school day were pure sweetness.

‘Still, if I had had those chances, I wouldn’t have gone to Sligo and I’d never have met her,’ he mused.

I was in my room in the digs after tea one evening when a daughter of the house in the blouse and gymfrock of the convent secondary school knocked and said, ‘There’s a visitor for you in the front room downstairs.’

A frail, grey-haired man rose as soon as I entered. He had an engaging handshake and smile.

‘I’m Owen Beirne, branch secretary of the INTO. I just called in to welcome you to the town and to invite you to our meeting on Friday night. I teach in a small school out in the country. Forgive the speech.’ He smiled as he sat down.

I explained briefly that I had joined the union already and suggested that we move from the stiff front room.

‘We’ll cross in a minute to the Bridge Bar. They always have a nice fire, but it’s safer to say what I have to say here. I suppose you don’t know about your Principal and the union.’

‘He told me he wasn’t a member.’

‘Did he try to stop you joining?’ he asked sharply.

‘No. I told him I’d joined already.’

‘Well, he was a member before the strike but he refused to come out on strike. For several months he crossed that picket line, while the church and de Valera tried to starve us to our knees.’

There was nothing for me to say.

‘As far as we are concerned, I mean the rest of the teachers around here, Kennedy doesn’t exist. You’re in a different position. He’s your Principal. You have to work with the man. But if we were to meet the two of you together, you might find yourself blackballed as well.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘It means nothing as far as you are concerned. You just go your own way and notice nothing. But should he try to pull the heavy on you in school — he did with one of your predecessors — let us know and we’ll fall on him like the proverbial load of bricks.’ He had risen. ‘That’s what I wanted to get out of the way.’

The bar was empty, but there was a bright fire of logs at one end. Owen Beirne ordered a hot whiskey with cloves and lemon. The barman seemed to like and respect him. I had a glass of lemonade.

‘Don’t you take a drink?’

‘Seldom.’

‘I drink too much. It’s expensive and a waste of time. During the times I don’t drink I read far more and feel better in every way. Unfortunately, it’s very pleasant.’

He told me his father had been a teacher. ‘My poor father had to go to the back door of the presbytery every month for his pay. The priest’s housekeeper gave it to him. It was four pounds in those days. I’ll never forget my mother’s face when he came back from the presbytery one night with three pounds instead of four. The housekeeper had held back a pound because the priest had decided to paint the church that month. One of the great early things the INTO got for the teacher was for the salary to be paid directly into his own hands — to get it through the post instead of from the priest or his housekeeper.

‘All that was changed by my time. The inspectors, the dear inspectors, were our hairshirts. A recurring nightmare I have is walking up and down in front of a class with an inspector sitting at the back quietly taking notes. Some were the roaring boys. One rode the bucking mule in Duffy’s Circus in Ballinasloe, got badly thrown, but was still out before nine the next morning to check if the particular teacher he’d been drinking with was on time. They were like lords or judges. Full-grown men trembled in front of them at these annual inspections. Women were often in tears. The best hams and fruit cakes were brought out at lunchtime. For some there had to be the whiskey bottle and stout in the schoolhouse after school.

‘Then, during the war, the Emergency, we had an inspector in Limerick called Deasy, a fairly young man. I was teaching in his area at the time. He was a real rat. In Newcastle West there was an old landed family, a racehorse and gambling crowd, down on their luck. An uncle was the Bishop of Cashel. One of the sons was a failed medical student, and God knows what else, and as part of a rehabilitation scheme didn’t the Bishop get him a temporary teaching job. Deasy was his inspector. I’m sure the teaching was choice, and what Deasy didn’t say to his man wasn’t worth saying. This crowd wasn’t used to being talked to like that. He just walked out of the school without saying a word. Deasy sat down to his tea and ham sandwiches and fruit cake with the schoolmistress. They were still having lunch when your man arrived back. He sat down with them, opened his coat nice and quietly, produced the shotgun and gave Deasy both barrels. He wasn’t even offered the Act of Contrition. I was in the cathedral in Limerick the night Deasy’s body was brought in. It was a sad sight, the widow and seven children behind the coffin. Every inspector in the country was at the funeral. Things were noticeably easier afterwards.’