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

She saw no significance in the memory other than it had displaced this actual day of her life and the disturbance her observations of Tommy McHugh had caused. Her life with her father and mother had passed. Her life with her husband had now passed. Was her whole life, then, all nothing? Was it just what happened and the memory of those happenings, like the old classmate she had once chanced upon in the ship’s restaurant during a Holyhead — Dublin crossing? The classmate had grown old, was only dimly recognizable, as she herself had grown old, having to be asked, if, indeed, she was the girl at Earlsfort Terrace who played hockey and married one of the medical students. The memory of her father, though, had not grown old, had come to her out of all those dead years with more freshness and vividness than the actual sea thistle and heather between the rocks at her feet high above the pounding ocean. It could not all be nothing. ‘A mind lively and at ease with itself is content to look at nothing,’ she recalled a favourite passage from Jane Austen, ‘and that nothing will always answer back;’ and suddenly the recollection itself gave heart and belief to her walk. That was what always answered back, all that we had loved, all that we had cared for. Love is never tired or dispirited. Love is ever watchful and lively and at ease.

The black cat was waiting for her return to the cottage. She lifted her on to her shoulder and carried her into the house just as her husband used to do on his return from work. The cat, at least, seemed to have taken on a new lease of life since the move to Achill. She had started to hunt again and had brought mice and small birds, even a frog, into the bedroom through the partially open window as she had done in Castlebar when she was young. Other times she sat out on dry stones in the middle of the stream, gazing down studiously at the small trout streaking about or lying still in the pools. Mrs Waldron didn’t like the offerings of the mice or small birds in the bedroom. She hadn’t liked it in Castlebar, but her husband had said, ‘What harm is it anyhow? It’s her nature,’ and as he had sanctioned it, she did not want to be the one to end it now. After meticulous crunching of small bones, she heard a vigorous licking, then loud purring as the cat curled into the eiderdown, declaring to all her own approval of the good, providing cat she knew herself to be.

In the evenings Mrs Waldron prepared dinner for herself and Eileen. Mostly they talked of Eileen’s day, of practical things that concerned the house and gardens in Castlebar and of Michael Flynn. They never talked other than glancingly of the dead man, and when they did the conversation was quick to move.

Hotels and restaurants on the island began to reopen for Easter, and the Waldrons returned to Castlebar for two weeks of the holiday. Nearly all the family came back over Easter, but for no more than a day or two, and all of them arrived and left separately. After they left, Mrs Waldron was more eager than ever to get back to Achill. For the time being. Eileen still didn’t mind the hour-long drive on and off the island. ‘It fills a space where loss can’t get in.’

The summer was unusual, dry and hot, with hardly any of the usual soft rain. The island became crowded. Motor bikes roared past. People carrying blaring transistors walked or cycled by the cottage. Wild music came through open windows of passing cars and into fields sloping down to the harbour where whole families were saving hay. There was much broken glass along the roads. Eileen had taken holidays and gone to France for two weeks. Then her sister and brother and their families came to the house in Castlebar, and there was much to-ing and fro-ing between the house and the island, so much so that Mrs Waldron was seldom alone. She was fond of all of them and glad to have them, but glad too to have two whole days to herself before Eileen came back.

The morning Eileen was due she felt too excited to concentrate on anything, and after feeding the black cat she cleaned the entire cottage. Then she went to buy some staples that were running low. Close to the shops she came on a van selling fresh fish and bought a sea trout for dinner. She thought it a lucky or happy omen for Eileen’s return: though this place was surrounded by the ocean, it was difficult to obtain fresh fish. With all the preparations for the homecoming, she was later than usual setting out on her walk. Tommy McHugh kept her talking for a long time, and he was full of complaint about the young collie who cowered now more than ever when approached. This changed her mood so much that she took a different route back to the cottage to avoid them. There was a lack of feeling, of sensitivity, in the man that disturbed her, and she was beginning to regret ever having come to know him.

While Mrs Waldron was talking to Tommy McHugh, Murphy and Heslin came up the road to the cottage. They wore jeans and sneakers, and because of the heat they had taken off their shirts and knotted the sleeves around their throats so that the light cotton floated out behind them in the ocean breeze, leaving their torsos bare. Murphy carried a loud-playing transistor. Heslin had a large, canvas bag slung from his shoulder in which there was a pair of collapsible stools, swimming-trunks, three six-packs of lager and a deck of cards. They were both in their twenties, sold encyclopaedias for a living and had come to the island because they’d heard it attracted working-class girls from Scotland and Northern Ireland who were reputedly free with their favours. Heslin was the better-looking and more forceful of the two and was admired by Murphy. Three nights they had been on the island, and so far had had no luck with girls, even though they drank each night into the hopeful hours in several bars and discos. They never rose before midday.

The black cat was waiting between the gate and escallonias for Mrs Waldron, and when Murphy and Heslin paused she went towards them and rubbed her fur against the bars of the gate. As she had known nothing but kindness, she did not flee when Heslin stooped to lift her into the crook of his arm. She continued to purr as she was carried the first few yards from the house, but when she tried to get away he held her tight. Once she began to claw and cry he took her in his strong hands and thrust her into the canvas bag. The cat alternately tore and struggled, or cried plaintively, but every ploy she tried was ineffective.

They passed Gielty’s Bar and the whitewashed cottage where Tommy McHugh lived with his wife beside another small stream at its entrance.

‘You wouldn’t be interested in a pint before heading for the bay?’ Murphy suggested as they passed the bar.

‘Not with the bloody cat.’

‘What’ll you do with it?’

‘I’m not sure. We’ll see.’

Cars passed them as they began to climb the Head. A gang of bikers roared past aggressively in red helmets and black leather, a blue insignia painted on the back of the jackets. Below them a solitary old woman was threading her way back through the sheep and rabbit paths. They kept their heads low as they climbed, but as soon as they reached the summit they could see the bright strand in the two arms of the bay, the high, dark cliffs rising on the far side. There were no boats on the ocean. They descended quickly, the cat crying and struggling in the bag. An ugly, flat-roofed concrete hut or storeroom stood on the road above the bay. The bikers had turned around, revving the engines before roaring back. There were a few cars parked in a lay-by past the concrete hut. A couple of families were picnicking on the rocks between the cars and the strand. The sand was as white and unspoiled as it had looked from the summit and was completely empty. The tide was about to turn, and they walked far out to the water’s edge, a white froth marking the tideline, a gentle, dirty backwash of water and sand curling back underneath the froth. A single man followed them out and searched along the froth until he found a green plastic oil can which marked a set line. He then began to lift the hooks, freshly baiting each one with sand eels taken from a red plastic bucket. His catch was small, three little plaice, a dogfish, the white head of a sea trout. Before removing the head and rebaiting the hook, he paused in obvious disappointment: by the size of the head the trout must have been two or three pounds, a prize catch but for the seals. Murphy and Heslin were afraid he’d be attracted by the cries from the canvas bag, but he didn’t appear to notice. Throwing a metal weight on the end of the line far out into the tide when he finished, he disappeared up the strand with his bucket and the few fish he’d caught.