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

It was into this quiet flow of the evening that the poet came, a large man, agitated, without jacket, the shirt open, his thumbs hooked in braces that held up a pair of sagging trousers, a brown hat pushed far back on his head. Coughing harshly and pushing the chair around, he sat at the next table.

‘Don’t look around,’ McDonough leaned forward to say.

‘Why?’

‘He’ll join us if we catch his eye.’

‘Who is he?’

‘A poet.’

‘He doesn’t look like one.’

‘That should be in his favour. All the younger clerks that work in my place nowadays look like poets. He is the best we have. He’s the star of the place across the road. He’s practically resident there. He must have been thrown out.’

The potboy in his short white coat came over to the poet’s table and waited impassively for the order.

‘A Powers,’ the order came in a hoarse, rhythmical voice. ‘A large Powers and a pint of Bass.’

There was more sharp coughing, a scraping of feet, a sigh, muttering, a word that could have been a prayer or a curse. His agitated presence had more the sound of a crowd than the single person sitting in a chair. After the potboy brought the drinks and was paid, the poet swung one leg vigorously over the other, and with folded arms faced away towards the empty doorway. Then, as suddenly, he was standing in front of them. He had his hand out. There were coins in the hand.

‘McDonough,’ he called hoarsely, thrusting his palm forward. ‘Will you get me a packet of Ci-tanes from across the road?’ He mispronounced the brand of French cigarettes so violently that his meaning was far from clear.

‘You mean the cigarettes?’

‘Ci-tanes,’ he called hoarsely again. ‘French fags. Twenty. I’m giving you the money.’

‘Why don’t you get them here?’

‘They don’t have them here.’

‘Why don’t you hop across yourself?’

‘I’m barred,’ he said dramatically. ‘They’re a crowd of ignorant, bloody apes over there.’

‘All right. I’ll get them for you.’ He took the coins but instead of rising and crossing the road he called the potboy.

‘Would you cross the road for twenty Gitanes for me, Jimmy? I’d cross myself but I’m with company,’ and he added a large tip of his own to the coins the poet had handed over.

‘It’s against the rules, sir.’

‘I know, but I’d consider it a favour,’ and they both looked towards the barman behind the counter who had been following every word and move of the confrontation. The barman nodded that it was all right, and immediately bent his head down to whatever he was doing beneath the level of the counter, as if to disown his acquiescence.

Jimmy crossed, was back in a moment with the blue packet.

‘You’re a cute hoar, McDonough. You’re a mediocrity. It’s no wonder you get on so well in the world,’ the poet burst out in a wild fury as he was handed the packet, and he finished his drinks in a few violent gulps, and stalked out, muttering and coughing.

‘That’s just incredible,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘You buy the man his cigarettes, and then get blown out of it. I don’t understand it.’

‘It wasn’t the cigarettes he wanted.’

‘Well, what did he want?’

‘Reassurance, maybe, that he still had power, was loved and wanted after having been turfed out across the way. I slithered round it by getting Jimmy here to go over. That’s why I was lambasted. He must have done something outrageous to have been barred. He’s a tin god there. Maybe I should have gone over after all.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Vanity. I didn’t want to be his messenger boy. He could go and inflate his great mouse of an ego somewhere else. To hell with him. He’s always trouble.’ She listened in silence as he ended. ‘Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to throw people their bones and forget it?’

‘You might have to spend an awful lot of time throwing bones if the word got around.’ She smiled as she sipped her glass of cider.

‘Now that you’ve seen the star, do you still wish to cross the road and look in on the other pub?’

‘I’m not sure. What else could we do?’

‘We could go back to my place.’

‘I’d like that. I’d much prefer to see how you live.’

‘Why don’t we look in across the road, have one drink if it’s not too crowded,’ and he added some coins to the change still on the table. ‘It was very nice of them to cross for the Gitanes. They’re not supposed to leave their own premises.’

The door of the bar across the way was not open, and when he pushed it a roar met them like heat. The bar was small and jammed. A red-and-blue tint from a stained glass window at the back mixed weirdly with the white lights of the bar, the light of evening from the high windows. A small fan circled helplessly overhead, its original white or yellow long turned to ochre by cigarette smoke. Hands proffered coins and notes across shoulders to the barmen behind the horseshoe counter. Pints and spirit glasses were somehow eased from hand to hand across the three-deep line of shoulders at the counter the way children that get weak are taken out of a crowd. The three barmen were so busy that they seemed to dance.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think we’ll forget it.’

‘I always feel a bit apprehensive going in there,’ he admitted once they were out on the street again.

‘I know. Those places are the same everywhere. For a moment I thought I was in New York at the Cedar Bar.’

‘What makes them the same?’

‘I don’t know. Mania, egotism, vanity, aggression … people searching madly in a crowd for something that’s never to be found in crowds.’

She was so lovely in the evening that he felt himself leaning towards her. He did not like the weakness. ‘I find myself falling increasingly into an unattractive puzzlement,’ he said, ‘mulling over that old, useless chestnut, What is life?’

‘It’s the fact of being alive, I suppose, a duration of time, as the scholars would say,’ and she smiled teasingly. ‘Puzzling out what it is must be part of it as well.’

‘You’re too young and beautiful to be so wise.’

‘That sounds a bit patronizing.’

‘That’s the last thing I meant it to be.’

He showed her the rooms, the large living-room with the oak table and worn red carpet, the brass fender, the white marble of the fireplace, the kitchen, the two bedrooms. He watched her go over the place, lift the sea shell off the mantelpiece, replace it differently.

‘It’s a lovely flat,’ she said, ‘though Spartan to my taste.’

‘I bought the place three years ago. I disliked the idea of owning anything at first, but now I’m glad to have it. Now, would you like a drink, or perhaps some tea?’

‘I’d love some tea.’

When he returned he found her thumbing through books in the weakening light.

‘Do you have any of the poet’s work?’

‘You can have a present of this, if you like.’ He reached and took a brown volume from the shelf.

‘I see it’s even signed,’ she said as she leafed through the volume. ‘For Patrick McDonough, With love,’ and she began to laugh.

‘I helped him with something once. I doubt if he’d sign it with much love this evening.’

‘Thanks,’ she said as she closed the volume and placed it in her handbag. ‘I’ll return it. It wouldn’t be right to keep it.’ After several minutes of silence, she asked, ‘When do you have to go back to your office?’

‘Not till Tuesday. Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday.’

‘And on Tuesday what do you do?’

‘Routine. The Department really runs itself, though many of us think of ourselves as indispensable. In the afternoon I have to brief the Minister.’