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

‘You might even get married there,’ Fonsie said sarcastically.

‘It’s unlikely but stranger things have happened, and I’ll definitely be buried there. Mother will want to be buried there some day.’

‘She’ll be buried with our father out in Glasnevin.’

‘I doubt that. Even the fish go back to where they came from. I’d say she’s had more than enough of our poor father in one life to be going on with. John here has a family, but it’s about time you gave where you’re going yourself some thought,’ Philly spoke directly to Fonsie.

‘If I were to go I’d want to go where there was people and a bit of life about, not on some God-forsaken hill out in the bog with a crow or a sheep or a bloody rabbit.’

‘There’s no if in this business, it’s just when . I’m sorry to have to say it, but it betrays a great lack of maturity on your part,’ Philly said with drunken severity.

‘You can plant maturity out there in the bog, for all I care, and may it grow into an ornament.’

‘We better be going,’ John said.

Philly rose and took Fonsie into his arms. In spite of his unsteadiness he carried him easily out to the car. Fonsie was close to tears. He had always thought he could never lose Philly. The burly block of exasperation would always come and go from the oil fields. Now he would go out to bloody Gloria Bog instead. As he was put in the car, his tears turned to rage.

‘Yes, you’ll be a big shot down there at last,’ he said. ‘They’ll be made up. They’ll be getting a Christmas present. They’ll be getting one great big lump of a Christmas present.’

‘Look,’ John said soothingly. ‘Mother will be waiting. She’ll want to hear everything. And I have another home I have to go to yet.’

‘I followed it all on the clock,’ the mother said. ‘I knew the Mass for Peter was starting at eleven and I put the big alarm clock on the table. At twenty past twelve I could see the coffin going through the cattle gate at the foot of Killeelan.’

‘They were like a crowd of apes carrying the coffin up the hill. I could see it all from the car. Several times they had to put up hands as if the coffin was going to fall off the shoulders and roll back down the hill.’

‘Once it did fall off. Old Johnny Whelan’s coffin rolled halfway down the hill and broke open. They had to tie the boards together with the ropes they use for lowering into the grave. Some said the Whelans were drunk, others said they were too weak with hunger to carry the coffin. The Whelans were never liked. They are all in America now.’

‘Anyhow, we buried poor Peter,’ Philly said, as if it was at last a fact.

John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and brought up in the Republic of Ireland. He trained to be a primary-school teacher before becoming a full-time writer, and later taught and travelled extensively. He lived in County Leitrim. The author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, he was the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, the American-Irish Award, the Prix Etrangère Ecureuil and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women , which won both the GPA and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a four-part BBC television series. His work appeared in numerous anthologies and has been translated into many languages. In 2005, his autobiography, Memoir , won the South Bank Literature Award. John McGahern died in 2006.