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

‘I never opened my mouth in the house and I never will. Through all those summers I never talked to anybody in the house but Mother and only when the house was empty. We were all made to feel that way — even Mother admitted that — but I was made to feel worse than useless. Every time I caught Peter looking at me I knew he was thinking that there was nothing wrong with me that a big stone and a rope and a deep bog hole couldn’t solve.’

‘You only thought that,’ Philly said gently.

‘Peter thought it too.’

‘Well then, if he did — which I doubt — he thinks it no more.’

‘By the way, you were very quick to pocket his wallet,’ Fonsie said quickly as if changing the attack.

‘That’s because nobody else seemed ready to take it. But you take it if that’s what you want.’ Philly took the wallet from his pocket and offered it to Fonsie.

‘I don’t want it.’ Fonsie refused the wallet roughly.

‘We’d better look into it, then. We’ll never get a quieter chance again in the next days.’

They were on a long straight stretch of road just outside the village. Philly moved the car in on to the grass margin. He left the engine running.

‘There are thousands in this wallet,’ Philly said simply after opening the wallet and fingering the notes.

‘You’d think the fool would have put it in a bank where it’d be safe and earning interest.’

‘Peter wouldn’t put it in a bank. It might earn a tax inspector and a few awkward questions as well as interest,’ Philly said as if he already was in possession of some of his dead uncle’s knowledge and presence.

With the exception of the huge evergreens that used to shelter the church, the village had not changed at all. They had been cut down. Without the rich trees the church looked huge and plain and ugly in its nakedness.

‘There’s nothing more empty than a space you knew once when it was full,’ Fonsie said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can you not see the trees?’ Fonsie gestured irritably.

‘The trees are gone.’

‘That’s what I mean. They were there and they’re no longer there. Can you not see?’

Philly pressed Fonsie to come into the bar-grocery but he could not be persuaded. He said that he preferred to wait in the car. When Fonsie preferred something, with that kind of pointed politeness, Philly knew from old exasperations that it was useless to try to talk, and he left him there in silence.

‘You must be one of the Ryans, then. You’re welcome but I’m very sorry about poor Peter. You wouldn’t be John, now? No? John stayed below in the house. You’re Philly, then, and that’s Fonsie out in the car. He won’t come in? Your poor mother didn’t come? I’m very sorry about Peter.’ The old man with a limp behind the counter repeated each scrap of information after Philly as soon as it was given between his own hesitant questions and interjections.

‘You must be Luke Henry, then?’ Philly asked.

‘The very man and still going strong. I remember you well coming in the summers. It must be at least ten years.’

‘No. Twenty years now.’

‘Twenty.’ He shook his head. ‘You’d never think. Terror how they go. It may be stiff pedalling for the first years but, I fear, after a bit, it is all freewheeling.’ When Luke smiled his face became strangely boyish. ‘What’ll you have? On the house! A large brandy?’

‘No, nothing at all. I just want to get a few things for the wake.’

‘You’ll have to have something, seeing what happened.’

‘Just a pint, then. A pint of Guinness.’

‘What will Fonsie have?’

‘He’s all right. He couldn’t be got to come in out of the car. He’s that bit upset,’ Philly said.

‘He’ll have to have something,’ Luke said doggedly.

‘Well, a pint, then. I’ll take it out to him myself. He’s that bit upset.’

When Philly opened the door of the car and offered him Luke’s pint, Fonsie said, ‘What’s this fucking thing for?’

‘Nothing would do him but to send you out a drink when I said you wouldn’t come in.’

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

‘Put it in your pocket. Use it for hair oil. It’s about time you came off your high horse and took things the way they are offered.’ Fonsie’s aggression was suddenly met with equal aggression, and before he had time to counter, Philly closed the car door, leaving him alone with the pint in his hand.

Back inside the bar Philly raised his glass. ‘Good luck. Thanks, Luke.’

‘To the man that’s gone,’ Luke said. ‘There was no sides to poor Peter. He was straight and thick. We could do with more like him.’

Philly drank quickly and then started his order: several bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, sherry, brandy, stout, beer, lemonade, orange, and loaves, butter, tea, coffee, ham and breasts of turkey. Luke wrote down each item as it was called. Several times he tried to cut down the order — ‘It’s too much, too much’ he kept muttering — then, slowly, one by one, all the time checking the list, he placed each item on the counter, checking it against the list once more before packing everything into several cardboard boxes.

Philly pulled out a wad of money.

‘No,’ Luke refused the money firmly. ‘We’ll settle it all out here later. You’ll have lots to bring back. Not even the crowd down in the bog will be able to eat and drink that much.’ He managed a smile in which malice almost equalled wistfulness.

After they’d filled the boot with boxes, they stacked more in the back seat and on one side of the folded wheelchair. Luke shook Fonsie’s hand as he helped to carry out the boxes to the car. ‘I’m sorry for your trouble’; but if Fonsie made any response it was inaudible. When they finished, Philly lifted the empty pint glass from the dashboard and handed it to Luke with a wink. Luke raised the pint glass in a sly gesture to indicate that he was more than well acquainted with the strange ways of the world.

‘In all my life I never had to drink a pint sitting on my own in a car outside a public house. There’s no manners round here. The people are savages,’ Fonsie complained as soon as the car moved.

‘You wouldn’t come in and Luke meant only the best,’ Philly said gruffly.

‘Of course, as usual you had to go and make a five-orsix-course meal out of the whole business.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought you’d never stop coming out of the pub with the boxes. The boot is full. The back seat is jammed. You must have enough to start a bar-restaurant yourself.’

‘They can be returned,’ Philly said defensively. ‘Luke wouldn’t even take money. We wouldn’t want to be disgraced by running out of drink in the middle of the wake. Luke said, everybody said, there was never anything small about Uncle Peter. He wouldn’t want anything to run short at his wake. The McDermotts were always big people.’

‘They were in their shite,’ Fonsie said furiously. ‘He made us feel we were stealing bread out of his mouth. But that’s you all over. Big, big, big,’ he taunted. ‘That’s why people in Dublin are fed up with you. You always have to make the big splash. You live in a rathole in the desert for eighteen months, then you come out and do the big fellow. People don’t want that. They want to go about their own normal lives. They don’t want your drinks or big blow.’

There are no things more cruel than truths about ourselves spoken to us by another that are perceived to be at least half true. Left unsaid and hidden we feel they can be changed or eradicated, in time. Philly gripped Fonsie’s shoulder in a despairing warning that he’d heard enough. They turned into the bog road to the house.

‘We live in no rathole in the desert,’ Philly said quietly. ‘There’s no hotel in Dublin to match where we live, except there’s no booze, and sometimes that’s no bad thing either.’