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

‘I’m afraid I was a bit extravagant and took a taxi,’ she said in the rapid speech she used when she was nervous or simulating confusion to create an effect.

‘What would you like?’

‘Would a hot whiskey be too much trouble?’

‘No trouble at all.’ The barman smiled and lifted the electric kettle. I moved the table to make room for her in the corner of the varnished partition beside the small coal fire in the grate. There was the sound of water boiling and the scent of cloves and lemon. When I rose to go to the counter for the hot drink, the barman motioned that he would bring it over to the fire.

‘The spoon is really to keep the glass from cracking’ — I nodded towards the steaming glass in front of her on the table. It was a poor attempt to acknowledge the intimacy of the favour. For several months I had been frustrating all his attempts to get to know us, for we had picked Gaffneys because it was out of the way and we had to meet like thieves. Dublin was too small a city to give even our names away.

‘This has just come.’ I handed her the telegram as soon as the barman had resumed his polishing of the glasses. It was from my father, saying it was urgent I go home at once. She read it without speaking. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ll have to go home.’

‘It doesn’t say why .’

‘Of course not. He never gives room.’

‘Is it likely to be serious?’

‘No, but if I don’t go there’s the nagging doubt that it may be.’

‘What are you going to do, then?’

‘Go, I suppose.’ I looked at her apprehensively.

‘Then that’s goodbye to our poor weekend,’ she said.

We were the same age and had known each other casually for years. I had first met her with Jerry McCredy, a politician in his early fifties, who had a wife and family in the suburbs, and a reputation as a womanizer round the city; but by my time all the other women had disappeared. The black-haired Geraldine was with him everywhere, and he seemed to have fallen in love at last when old, even to the point of endangering his career. I had thought her young and lovely and wasted, but we didn’t meet in any serious way till the night of the Cuban Crisis.

There was a general fever in the city that night, so quiet as to be almost unreal, the streets and faces hushed. I had been wandering from window to window in the area round Grafton Street. On every television set in the windows the Russian ships were still on course for Cuba. There was a growing air that we were walking in the last quiet evening of the world before it was all consumed by fire. ‘It looks none too good.’ I heard her quick laugh at my side as I stood staring at the ships moving silently across the screen.

‘None too good.’ I turned. ‘Are you scared?’

‘Of course I’m scared.’

‘Do you know it’s the first time we’ve ever met on our own?’ I said. ‘Where’s Jerry?’

‘He’s in Cork. At a meeting. One that a loose woman like myself can’t appear at.’ She laughed her quick provocative laugh.

‘Why don’t you come for a drink, then?’

‘I’d love to. With the way things are I was even thinking of going in for one on my own.’

There was a stillness in the bar such as I had never known. People looked up from their drinks as each fresh newsflash came on the set high in the corner, and it was with visible relief that they bent down again to the darkness of their pints.

‘It’s a real tester for that old chestnut about the Jesuit when he was asked what he’d do if he was playing cards at five minutes to midnight and was suddenly told that the world was going to end at midnight,’ I said as I took our drinks to the table in one of the far corners of the bar, out of sight of the screen.

‘And what would he do?’

‘He’d continue playing cards, of course, to show that all things are equal. It’s only love that matters.’

‘That’s a fine old farce.’ She lifted her glass.

‘It’s strange, how I’ve always wanted to ask you out, and that it should happen this way. I always thought you very beautiful.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You were with Jerry.’

‘You should still have told me. I don’t think Jerry ever minded the niceties very much when he was after a woman,’ she laughed, and then added softly, ‘Actually, I thought you disliked me.’

‘Anyhow, we’re here this night.’

‘I know, but it’s somehow hard to believe it.’

It was the stillness that was unreal, the comfortable sitting in chairs with drinks in our hands, the ships leaving a white wake behind them on the screen. We were in the condemned cell waiting for reprieve or execution, except that this time the whole world was the cell. There was nothing we could do. The withering would happen as simply as the turning on or off of a light bulb.

Her hair shone dark blue in the light. Her skin had the bloom of ripe fruit. The white teeth glittered when she smiled. We had struggled towards the best years; now they waited for us, and all was to be laid waste as we were about to enter into them. In the freedom of the fear I moved my face close to hers. Our lips met. I put my hand on hers.

‘Is Jerry coming back tonight?’

‘No.’

‘Can I stay with you tonight?’

‘If you want that.’ Her lips touched my face again.

‘It’s all I could wish for — except, maybe, a better time.’

‘Why don’t we go, then?’ she said softly.

We walked by the Green, closed and hushed within its railings, not talking much. When she said, ‘I wonder what they’re doing in the Pentagon as we walk these steps by the Green?’ it seemed more part of the silence than any speech.

‘It’s probably just as well we can’t know.’

‘I hope they do something. It’d be such a waste. All this to go, and us too.’

‘We’d be enough.’

There was a bicycle against the wall of the hallway when she turned the key, and it somehow made the stairs and lino-covered hallway more bare.

‘It’s the man’s upstairs.’ She nodded towards the bicycle. ‘He works on the buses.’

The flat was small and untidy.

‘I had always imagined Jerry kept you in more style,’ I said idly.

‘He doesn’t keep me. I pay for this place. He always wanted me to move, but I would never give up my own place,’ she said sharply, but she could not be harsh for long, and began to laugh. ‘Anyhow he always leaves before morning. He has his breakfast in the other house’; and she switched off the light on the disordered bed and chairs and came into my arms. The night had been so tense and sudden that we had no desire except to lie in one another’s arms, and as we kissed a last time before turning to seek our sleep she whispered, ‘If you want me during the night, don’t be afraid to wake me up.’

The Russian ships had stopped and were lying off Cuba, the radio told us as she made coffee on the small gas stove beside the sink in the corner of the room the next morning. The danger seemed about to pass. Again the world breathed, and it looked foolish to have believed it had ever been threatened.

Jerry was coming back from Cork that evening, and we agreed as we kissed to let this day go by without meeting but to meet at five the next day in Gaffneys of Fairview.

The bicycle had gone from the hallway by the time I left. The morning met me as other damp cold Dublin mornings, the world almost restored already to the everyday. The rich uses we dreamed last night when it was threatened that we would put it to if spared were now forgotten, when again it lay all about us in such tedious abundance.

‘Did Jerry notice or suspect anything?’ I asked over the coal fire in Gaffneys when we met, both of us shy in our first meeting as separate persons after the intimacy of flesh.