John McGahern - The Pornographer

I groaned inwardly at the sea of talk that must have been set rippling by our small dark meetings, and resolved to end it as soon as the boat trip ended. Out of guilt at my own withdrawal, my useless passivity, I made my own poor gesture toward the doomed charade.

“I’ll be able to get a car,” I said. “I’ll drive you down to the boat.”

“You’ll drive us down.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Betty and Janey said they’d be glad to lend us their car for the weekend.”

“No, I can borrow a car or van from the paper. I used to have a car of my own but I didn’t have enough use for it.”

“I’d have a car,” she said, “if I could afford it. I think a car is a wonderful extension of your life. It’s almost as good as a third arm.”

“Will you have a last drink?” I asked towards closing time. “We’ll not go back to my place tonight.”

It was like pulling the trigger of a gun that had been following the movement of a bird settling in high branches, pulled as much out of the tiredness of following it among the branches as any desire of killing.

“Why?” she demanded.

It’d serve as a rehearsal for finishing it, I thought, a sounding out, though plain sense said that the only way to finish it was by finishing it now, and I flinched from that.

“There’s a lot of trouble,” I explained. “My aunt has taken a turn for the worse. My uncle is coming up. I’ll have to shepherd him around. And I have all this work to do.”

Maloney was fond of saying that every good lie must be flavoured with a little truth, as whiskey with water.

“He won’t be up tonight, will he?”

“No, but there’s things I have to do before he comes.”

“When will we meet, then?” she didn’t question it further.

“Say, Saturday night.”

“All that length of time. It’s almost time for the boat trip then.”

“We’ll have all that weekend on the boat and I just want to be free this whole week. Since you complain of these pubs, we’ll do anything you want to do on Saturday,” I said by way of appeasement.

She thought for a while and then said without hesitation, “I know what I’d like to do,” she was suddenly aglow. “I’ll come to your place and cook you a meal.”

“My place is a mess as far as cooking goes. I’ll take you out for a meal. Any place you want.”

“No. I have this feeling you’re not looking after yourself properly. I want to cook you a good meal. I’ll get the food but I’ll leave the wine to you.”

I tried to protest but I saw that she had her mind made up. “What kind of wine will I get? Red or white?” I backed down.

“Red. Get red wine,” it seemed she had the meal already half planned.

My aunt was sitting up in bed, combed and made-up when I brought her in the bottle of brandy the next evening. She looked excited and happy.

“I’m going home,” she said, though it wasn’t necessary to say it. “You’ll not have to waste your money bringing in the old brandy any more but God bless you for it. I don’t know what I’d have done without it.”

“How are you going?”

“I rang last night. Your uncle is coming up for me tomorrow. He’s taking the big car. He wants you to ring him tonight.”

“Why isn’t Cyril coming?” I asked her sharply.

“Poor Cyril is far too busy,” she answered with equal sharpness, intolerant of the question.

My uncle was far the busier, but all the foolish sweetness of her late love was for Cyril and pardoned everything he did before turning it to praise. My uncle’s hard-working, decent life counted for nothing by its side, his refusal to be anything but his own man just another woeful example of bad manners and general inconsiderateness. Facts were just left carelessly around by other people in order to trip you up. “He’s certainly as busy as Cyril,” I said carefully, but she flushed with anger.

“You never liked Cyril. Of course you’d take your uncle’s side, what else could I expect?”

“Liking has nothing to do with it, just plain facts.”

“It’s no wonder poor Cyril always complained the both of you ganged up on him.”

“I’m very fond of my uncle but that has nothing got to do with it.”

“Oh has it not? If you were to strip off those city manners you’d find that both of you are the exact same breed. What passes for quiet is stubbornness and you’re both thick as ditches.”

“It’s useful,” I started to say, but then was appalled to find myself in the middle of a quarrel. These were the first unkind words we’d had all the time she’d been in the hospital, and she was going home tomorow. “I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll ring him this evening,” I changed, but she didn’t answer. After a few steps I wanted to turn back to say that I was sorry, but by then I saw that she was crying.

“O, aye,” my uncle said when I told him my aunt had asked me to telephone. “You know I’m going up tomorrow?”

“I know that.”

“Well, I was wonderin’ if you’d meet me somewhere out of the city. I don’t like driving the big car in the city.”

“I’ll meet you at Maynooth, then. Would eleven be all right?”

“Eleven would be fine. Say, at the gates of the priests’ factory,” it was one of his few jokes. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. How are you keeping yourself?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he said. “And there’d be no use complaining anyhow if it wasn’t.”

I took the bus out to Maynooth the next morning, and was waiting for him at the seminary gates when the “big car” pulled up ten or fifteen minutes after eleven, a black V8, old and heavy enough to have come out of any of several gangster movies. Among other things, he kept it on the principle that, since driving was so careless in Ireland, someone was bound to hit him sooner later and when that happened “The other fella wasn’t going to come out looking for a light.” Since he took it out so seldom, the fact that it swallowed petrol was a small price to pay for such insulated misanthropy. He left the engine running and moved over to let me take the wheel.

“It’s a great ease for me that you’re taking her in,” he shuffled in his pocket and took out a box of small cigars. “There was a time I used to take trucks three times a week through to the docks but not any more with this traffic.”

“She running beautifully,” I said, and it was a pleasure to feel her roll, solid and stately.

“There’s no plastic in this old bus. They made them to last in those days.”

As we drew in towards the city, I saw people nudge and smile at us. I smiled back and was glad my uncle didn’t notice. It would not have pleased him that the big car had now reached the status of an antique.

“Well, how is the patient?” he had to ask at long last.

“I’m afraid I ran into trouble with her last night.”

“What sort of trouble?” he asked apprehensively.

“It was nothing. I got a bit annoyed when she said poor Cyril was too busy to come up for her and told you were far busier. It was just a puff. It’ll be all over but you’re as well to know about it.”

“The only time poor Cyril gets busy these days is on the high stool,” he chuckled. “But you couldn’t tell that woman that. And you should hear the pity he has for himself, you’d think it was him that should be in the hospital, especially if there’s a woman near to listen, and you know there’s no use talking to a woman once her mind’s made up. Trying to talk to a woman with her mind made up is like trying to turn back a pig in a wide meadow: they’ll always go past you.”

“I was sorry I got into it. It was no time for crossing her,” I said.