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

They danced again and afterwards came back to the table, sipped the drinks, sat and talked, and danced again. Time raced.

‘Do you have to go on night duty tonight?’ he asked as it moved near the time when the band would stand and play the anthem. He was afraid he would lose her then.

‘No. I’m on tomorrow night.’

‘Maybe you’d eat something with me this evening?’

‘I’d like that.’

There was still some daylight left when they came from the dancehall, and they turned away from it into a bar. They both had coffee. An hour later, when he knew it was dark outside, he asked awkwardly, ‘I suppose it’s a bit outrageous to suggest a walk before we look for a place to eat,’ his guilty smile apologizing for such a poor and plain admission of the sexual.

‘I don’t see why not.’ She smiled. ‘I’d like a walk.’

‘What if it’s raining?’ He gave them both the excuse to draw back.

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ she said.

It was raining very lightly, the street black and shining under the lamps, but she didn’t seem to mind the rain, nor that the walk led towards the dark shabby streets west of O’Connell Street. There they found a dark doorway and embraced. She returned his kisses with the same directness and freedom with which she had danced, but people kept continually passing in the early evening dark, until they seemed to break off together to say, ‘This is useless,’ and arm in arm to head back towards the light.

‘It’s a pity we haven’t some room or place of our own,’ he said.

‘Where did you spend last night?’ she asked.

‘Where I stay every weekend, a rooming house in North Earl Street, four beds to the room.’

It was no place to go. A dumb man in the next bed to his had been very nearly beaten up the night before. The men who took the last two beds had been drinking. They woke the dumb man while they fumbled for the light, and he sat up in his bed and gestured towards the partly open window as soon as the light came on. Twice he made the same upward movement with his thumb: he wanted them to try to close the window because of the cold wind blowing in. The smaller of the two men misinterpreted the gesture and with a shout fell on the man. They realized that he was dumb when he started to squeal. She didn’t laugh at the story.

‘It’s not hard to give the wrong signals in this world.’

‘We could go to a hotel,’ she said. He was stopped dead in his tracks. ‘That’s if you want to, and only — only — if I can pay half.’

‘Which hotel?’

‘Are you certain you’d want that? It doesn’t matter to me.’ She was looking into his face.

‘There’s nothing I want more in the world, but where?’ He stood between desire and fear.

‘The Clarence across the river is comfortable and fairly inexpensive.’

‘Will we see if we can get a room before we eat or afterwards?’ He was clumsy with diffidence in the face of what she had proposed.

‘We might as well look now, but are you certain?’

‘I’m certain. And you?’

‘As long as you agree that I can pay half,’ she said.

‘I agree.’

They sealed one another’s lips and crossed the river by the Halfpenny Bridge.

‘Do you think we will have any trouble?’ he asked as they drew close to the hotel.

‘We’ll soon find out. I think we both look respectable enough,’ and for the first time he thought he felt some nervousness in her handclasp, and it made him feel a little easier.

There was no trouble. They were given a room with a bath on the second floor.

‘I liked very much that you gave your real name,’ she said when they were alone.

‘Why?’

‘It seemed more honest …’

‘It was the only name I could think of at the time,’ and their nervousness found release in laughter.

The bathroom was just inside the door. The bed and bedside lamp and table were by the window, a chair and writing table in the opposite corner, two armchairs in the middle of the room. The window looked down on the night city and the river. He drew the curtains and took her in his arms.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘We’ve plenty of time before going out to eat.’

While she was in the bathroom he turned off the light, slipped from his clothes, and got into the bed to wait for her.

‘Why did you turn out the light?’ she asked sharply when she came from the bathroom.

‘I thought you’d want it out.’

‘I want to see.’

It was not clear whether she wanted the light for the practical acts of undressing or if she wanted these preliminaries to what is called the act of darkness to be free of all furtiveness, that they should be noted with care like the names of places passed on an important journey.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and turned on the bedside lamp. He watched her slow, sure movements as she stepped from her clothes, how strong and confident and beautiful she was. ‘Do you still want the light on?’ he asked as she came towards him.

‘No.’

‘You are beautiful.’ He wanted to say that her naked beauty took his breath away, was almost hurtful.

What he had wanted so much that it had become frightening she made easy, but it was almost impossible to believe that he now rested in the still centre of what had long been a dream. After long deprivation the plain pleasures of bed and table grow sadly mystical.

‘Have you slept with anyone before?’ he asked.

‘Yes, with one person.’

‘Were you in love with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you still in love with him?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘I never have.’

‘I know.’

They came again into one another’s arms. There was such peace afterwards that the harsh shrieking of the gulls outside, the even swish of the traffic along the quays, was more part of that peace.

Is this all? Common greed and restlessness rose easily to despise what was so hard come by as soon as it was gained, so luckily, so openly given. Before it had any time to grow there was the grace of dressing, of going out to eat together in the surety that they were coming back to this closed room. He felt like a young husband as he waited for her to finish dressing.

The light drizzle of the early evening had turned into a downpour by the time they came down, the hotel lobby crowded with people in raincoats, many carrying umbrellas.

‘We’re guaranteed a drowning if we head out in that.’

‘We don’t need to. We can eat here. The grill is open.’

It was a large, very pleasant room with light wood panelling and an open fire at its end. She picked the lamb cutlets, he the charcoaled steak, and they each had a glass of red wine.

‘This has to be split evenly as well,’ she said.

‘I don’t see why. I’d like to take you.’

‘That was the bargain. It must be kept.’ She smiled. ‘How long have you been teaching?’

‘Less than a year. I was in Maynooth for a long time.’

‘Were you studying for the priesthood?’

‘That’s what people mostly do there,’ he said drily. ‘I left with only a couple of months to go. It must sound quite bad.’

‘It’s better than leaving afterwards. Why did you leave?’ she asked with formidable seriousness. It could not be turned aside with sarcasm or irony.

‘Because I no longer believed. I could hardly lead others to a life that I didn’t believe in myself. When I entered Maynooth at eighteen I thought the whole course of my life was settled. It wasn’t.’

‘There must be something,’ she insisted.

‘There may well be, but I don’t know what it is.’

‘Was it because you needed … to be married?’

‘No, not sex,’ he said. ‘Though that’s what many people think. If anything, the giving up of sex — renunciation was the word we used — gave the vocation far more force. We weren’t doing anything easy. That has its own pride. We were giving up an idea of pleasure for a far greater good. That is … until belief started to go … and then all went.’