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

With the years, Maggie and I had drawn closer. Whenever I had to go into the town I nearly always called at her house to see if she wanted to come and I often took the children to the train or met them when they came for weekends from Dublin.

All three children were at university. They were well mannered and intelligent and anxious to please, but compared to Maggie’s rootedness they were like shadows. It was as if none of them could quite believe they had full rights to be alive on earth under the sky like every single other.

Every year I drove Maggie to the Christmas dinner and party for senior citizens in the parish hall. I am now almost old enough to go to the dinner in my own right, but it is one meal I want to put off for as long as I can. When Maggie was made Senior Citizen of the Year, it was natural that I’d drive her to Carrick for the presentation. All of us who knew her were delighted, but there was great difficulty in getting her to accept.

‘Well, all of us here think it’s great, Maggie, no matter what you say,’ I said to her as we drove to Carrick.

‘It’s a lot of bother,’ she answered. ‘The old people used always to say it was never lucky to be too noticed. The shady corners are safer.’

‘Even the shady corners may be safe no longer, but isn’t it wonderful how well all the children did, and all you were able to do for them.’

‘They were no trouble. They did it all themselves. I think they were making sure they’d never be left behind a second time,’ and then she laughed her old, deep laugh. ‘The two lassies will be fine, but I’m not so sure if his lordship will last the course. When he set out to be a doctor I don’t think he realized he was in for seven years. Now his head is full of nothing but girls and discos. He thinks I’m made of money.’

As Maggie entered the ballroom of the hotel, everybody stood, and there was spontaneous clapping as she was led to her place. I saw Jerome Callaghan and his young wife at one of the tables. It was said he gave Maggie all the help she would allow over the years in bringing up the children — and I can’t imagine her ever taking very much — and that he had played a part in her being chosen. I waited until she was seated behind an enormous vase of roses. Then I left as we had agreed. I walked about the empty town, had one drink in a quiet bar that also sold shoes and boots, across from the town clock, until it was time to take Maggie home.

‘How did you enjoy it anyhow?’ I asked as we drove towards the lake.

‘Enjoy it?’ she laughed. ‘I suppose they meant well but I wouldn’t like to go through the likes of tonight too often. The whole lot of them would lighten your head. What did I do? I did nothing. What else could I do? I was — in life.’

She was silent then until we turned in round the lake. ‘Even where I am now, it’s still all very interesting. Sometimes even far, far too interesting.’

The moon was bright on the lake, turning it into a clear, still sky. The fields above the lake and the dark shapes of the hedges stood out. Maggie sat quietly in the car while I got out to open the gate. Only a few short years before she would have insisted on getting out and walking the whole way in on her own. Wildfowl scattered from the reeds along the shore out towards the centre of the lake as soon as the car door opened. They squawked and shrieked for a while before turning into a dark silent huddle. Close by, a white moon rested on the water. There was no wind. The stars in their places were clear and fixed. Who would want change since change will come without wanting? Who this night would not want to live?

After Fonsie Ryan called his brother he sat in his wheelchair and waited with growing impatience for him to appear on the small stairs, and then, as soon as Philly came down and sat at the table, Fonsie moved his wheelchair to the far wall to wait for him to finish. This silent pressure exasperated Philly as he ate.

‘Did Mother get up yet?’ he asked abruptly.

‘She didn’t feel like getting up. She went back to sleep after I brought her tea.’

Philly let his level stare rest on his brother but all Fonsie did was to move his wheelchair a few inches out from the wall and then, in the same leaning rocking movement, let it the same few inches back, his huge hands all the time gripping the wheels. With his large head and trunk, he sometimes looked like a circus dwarf. The legless trousers were sewn up below the hips.

Slowly and deliberately Philly buttered the toast, picked at the rashers and egg and sausages, took slow sips from his cup, but his nature was not hard. As quickly as he had grown angry he softened towards his brother.

‘Would you be interested in pushing down to Mulligan’s after a while for a pint?’

‘I have the shopping to do.’

‘Don’t let me hold you up, then,’ Philly responded sharply to the rebuff. ‘I’ll be well able to let myself out.’

‘There’s no hurry. I’ll wait and wash up. It’s nice to come back to a clean house.’

‘I can wash these things up. I do it all the time in Saudi Arabia.’

‘You’re on your holidays now,’ Fonsie said. ‘I’m in no rush but it’s too early in the day for me to drink.’

Three weeks before, Philly had come home in a fever of excitement from the oil fields. He always came home in that high state of fever and it lasted for a few days in the distribution of the presents he always brought home, especially to his mother; his delight looking at her sparse filigreed hair bent over the rug he had brought her, the bright tassels resting on her fingers; the meetings with old school friends, the meetings with neighbours, the buying of rounds and rounds of drinks; his own fever for company after the months at the oil wells and delight in the rounds of celebration blinding him to the poor fact that it is not generally light but shadow that we cast; and now all that fever had subsided to leave him alone and companionless in just another morning as he left the house without further word to Fonsie and with nothing better to do than walk to Mulligan’s.

Because of the good weather, many of the terrace doors were open and people sat in the doorways, their feet out on the pavement. A young blonde woman was painting her toenails red in the shadow of a pram in a doorway at the end of the terrace, and she did not look up as he passed. Increasingly people had their own lives here and his homecoming broke the monotony for a few days, and then he did not belong.

As soon as the barman in Mulligan’s had pulled his pint he offered Philly the newspaper spread out on the counter that he had been reading.

‘Don’t you want it yourself?’ Philly asked out of a sense of politeness.

‘I must have been through it at least twice. I’ve the complete arse read out of it since the morning.’

There were three other drinkers scattered about the bar nursing their pints at tables.

‘There’s never anything in those newspapers,’ one of the drinkers said.

‘Still, you always think you’ll come on something,’ the barman responded hopefully.

‘That’s how they get your money,’ the drinker said.

Feet passed the open doorway. When it was empty the concrete gave back its own grey dull light. Philly turned the pages slowly and sipped at the pint. The waiting silence of the bar became too close an echo of the emptiness he felt all around his life. As he sipped and turned the pages he resolved to drink no more. The day would be too hard to get through if he had more. He’d go back to the house and tell his mother he was returning early to the oil fields. There were other places he could kill time in. London and Naples were on the way to Bahrain.

‘He made a great splash when he came home first,’ one of the drinkers said to the empty bar as soon as Philly left. ‘He bought rings round him. Now the brother in the wheelchair isn’t with him any more.’