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

‘I was just passing,’ he said when he saw her reluctance to enter the car.

‘I don’t want to avoid you but I can’t afford to be seen with you either.’

‘I’m offering a lift. That’s all,’ he said.

‘It’s too dangerous.’ He saw she was not herself, excited and troubled.

‘I’m just going that way,’ he said.

‘An hour ago I called to the house and it was shut; the children gone again. I’m not free. Sometimes I think I’m worse off now than before I got the job in the mart.’

‘You are free as far as I’m concerned.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ She smiled. ‘I’m still not free as far as I’m concerned.’

‘And I’m ready to help you in any way I can — and even wait.’

At the lake gate he stopped the car, and as she was about to shut the door, she said, ‘If you’d like to come in to meet my mother, you are welcome.’

‘Maggie and I have known each other for years.’

‘We’ll have to drive, then. The car would be seen by too many at the gate.’

When the car crossed the hill and was going down to the house under the tall trees, he eased it to a stop, letting the engine run.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ he asked.

‘I don’t see how someone like you would want to get involved in my situation.’

‘I love you.’

In spite of his rational or common-sense self, he’d been drawn into the town in the early morning because of nothing but her presence in the rooms above the hairdresser’s. He had this obsessional desire to see her, if only with her children at Mass. He’d watched her leave the rooms and walk to the bungalow on the outskirts of the town. From a safe distance he’d observed her attempts to enter the locked house. When he saw her walk out of the town in the direction of the lake, he guessed where she was going.

‘You are only making things bad for yourself. Even if I wanted to help, there is nothing I can do. You see how I am. It is as if I’ve already had my life.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘I don’t know but I know it can’t go on like this. On Achill it was this bad, but in a different way, and I knew then it couldn’t go on. I knew something had to happen. What happened was the last thing I wanted or wished, but it did happen. I have the same feeling that something is about to happen now that will change everything. It has to happen.’

‘Tell me one thing. It is all I ask. If you were free, would you be interested at all?’

‘Yes. But what use is that?’

‘It’s use to me. I know you well enough to know you would not say it for the sake of saying. Even I feel something has to happen. I hope to God it can set us free.’

She thought of kissing him lightly but then drew back. She had not even that right. He drove to the house. In the house he had tea with the two women and chatted agreeably with Maggie before leaving them alone after a half-hour.

If they had kissed when the car was stopped under the trees that went down to the house, if they had even lain bone to bone in the empty night above Main Street in the solace and healing that flesh can bring to hurt desire, they would not have gone halfway to satisfy all the rife rumour implied they did with one another: ‘Old Ireland is coming along at a great rate. There was a time you lay on the bed you made, but now it’s all just the same as a change of oil or tyres. The Harkins have split. Harkin has a German woman and scores of others when he feels like rising. The heart, my dear, may be wobbly but it appears everything is healthy enough in other departments. The wife, I hear, hasn’t let any grass grow either. She works at the mart and is seen with Jerome Callaghan, who, they say, can tip a cat on the way out through a skylight. Yes, my dear, old Ireland is certainly coming along.’ None of those who discoursed so freely above supermarket trolleys or bar counters, or just standing or sitting about, could trace their words to any source, but it did not lessen the authority with which they spoke. I even heard things quoted that I was supposed to have said of which I had never spoken a word.

At the height of these rumours, Harkin came all the way round the lake to see me. I was in the house when I heard the beat of a heavy diesel. I listened for it to go past the gate, but the sound stopped. After a while, a low tapping came on the front door. A small boy stood outside. I failed to recognize him.

‘Daddy wants to see you.’

‘Who’s Daddy?’

‘Guard Harkin.’

‘What does he want?’ It was too late now to try to make any amends to the boy. If he had been with Kate or Maggie, I’d have known him and given him coins or chocolate or cake or apples.

‘He said he wants to see you.’

Harkin sat beside the wheel of the blue Mercedes outside the gate in the shade of the alders. His door was thrown open. The two girls sat in the back. He had put on a great deal of weight since his playing days. His features had coarsened. I assumed he did not get out of the car because of his heart condition.

‘What kind of fish are in the lake?’ he demanded though he already knew. He had helped to net the lake.

‘Pike, eel, perch …’

‘Is there much?’

‘Not any more. They say the tourists netted the lake.’

‘The foreigners are blamed for everything nowadays.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t know but you’d talk.’

‘The boy said you wanted to see me. Is there something you want?’

‘I just wanted to get a look at you,’ he said and shut the car door. I watched him back the Mercedes away from the gate and turn down to the lake, the children grave and silent in the back.

Maggie told me Jerome Callaghan came alone a few times to the house during those months. She also said there was never truth in the rumours flying around about him and Kate. He liked Kate and wished to help her, but that was all there ever was to it. Maggie was right and wasn’t right.

One evening Kate left the children early because the German woman was making her presence felt in the house. She was walking back towards Main Street when Callaghan’s car drew up. He wanted to take her to see his unfinished house.

‘It’s too dark for us to be seen, and it’s normal for the car to be driving there.’

The night was dark. She had to imagine the woods on either side, the lake in darkness below the house, the mountains at the back. When the front light came on, she saw a small concrete mixer, a barrow and wooden planks scattered about on what could have been intended as a long lawn. A paint-splattered table stood in the centre of the large living room with some wooden chairs. All the other rooms were empty and held hollow echoes.

‘It came cheap on the market, another man’s misfortune, but I’ve never been able to let it go. I know they laugh: “Callaghan’s built a big cage without first finding a bird.”’

Kate went with him from room to room, looking with curiosity at everything but without speaking. As they prepared to leave, she said, ‘It could be a fine house. A rich man’s house.’

‘Maybe some day,’ he said, and she was glad he did not complete the wish. Without touching or speaking, they had drawn very close, as if they were two single people setting out on a journey from which they could return together. On the outskirts of the town she asked him to stop the car so that she could walk in to the first street light alone but before she left the car she kissed him firmly on the lips. ‘I know it’s dangerous and I can promise nothing.’

The silent, almost unbearable strain in the evenings with Harkin and the children changed without warning. He became alarmingly friendly. He must have heard some rumour about Callaghan and Kate. The German woman disappeared from the house. His voice could not have been more conciliatory when he spoke to her for the first time in months.