John McGahern - The Pornographer

“You’d get a job. There are several jobs you’d get. And you’d not have to write pornography any more. I can see it’s affecting you for the worse in every way. And I’d get a whopping great gratuity from the bank after all these years that’ll keep us till you get a job, even until the child is born. The only demand I’d make is that you give up Mavis — what’sher-name — Carmichael? Otherwise I’d be a compliant wife, an old-fashioned wife.”

We sat on a green bench deep in the Park. It was beautiful. The daffodils and narcissi were out and the first small hearts of the leaves. In the far distance beyond the white railing men on horses were lining up before the start of a polo match.

“We have to talk,” I said.

“I love you so much. All this I feel can have only happened for the best. I know we’ll be very happy. I’ll make you happy.”

“The first thing we have to find out is — are you pregnant or not?” I had to say it brutally for it to get through.

“I’ve never missed before.”

“That’s no way to be certain. You’ll have to take a test.”

“What sort of test?”

“A urine test. We’ll have to get a sample of your urine first thing in the morning, and have it analysed. They inject it into an animal and if it comes out positive then you’re pregnant.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about this. As if you’ve been through it all before.”

“I haven’t. You don’t have to be through everything to know about it. It’s just one of the side benefits of writing pornography, you have to know all the facts, even the ones you don’t use.”

“Won’t we get married, even if I’m not pregnant?” she suddenly said.

“Are you crazy?” it was the first time I looked her full in the face. “I’m not running out. And I will marry you — if I have to, if there’s no other way out. But the first thing you have to do is to take the test.”

“O boy, Ο boy, I sure picked a winner.”

I turned away and dug nails into my hands. If she said Ο boy once more I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold myself in check.

“We might as well go for a drink or something to eat,” I said, and we both rose from the bench. The polo game was now on, the horses with their white-breeched riders racing backwards and forwards beyond the paling. A car with a school of motoring sign went slowly past, a young woman tensely upright at the wheel, the instructor slumped by her side.

“Stout and a sandwich would suit me better than a proper meal. What about you?” I didn’t feel like eating at all.

“Anything. Anything you like. I know everything is all right now,” she took my arm.

We walked further out, as far as the Angler’s Rest, facing the Park Wall. They served beef and cheese sandwiches.

“Last Sunday was the worst day. I hadn’t heard from you, and I hadn’t yet got up enough courage to send you the telegram. I went out to Betty and Janey’s place for lunch. Afterwards we sat around and read all the Sunday papers. There was this article in the Observer , about unmarried girls in England who’d got pregnant … did you see it?”

“No.”

“Many of them were Irish, and there was this peach of an Irishman too, who got his English girl friend pregnant. When she told him she was, do you know what he said — it’s hardly believable—‘You can keep your baggage here, then, in this heathen country. I’m heading back for the auld sod.’ I must have turned beetroot. I felt Betty and Janey could see through me as I read. I left the flat as soon as I could. They wanted to drive me but I said I needed to walk. As soon as I got out of sight of the flat I turned and went down to the sea. I stood on the rocks and thought I’m one of those girls now. I couldn’t believe it. I watched the waves come into the rocks. There was one big ship far out. And I wanted to walk out into the water, and farther and farther out until the waves would cover me.”

“Anyhow, you sent the telegram and you’re here.”

“We might as well go back to your place. We have nothing to lose now,” she said later, at the end of the evening in which nothing had been resolved, everything having grown, if anything, more blurred, fear and shame and dismay and revulsion following one another like the revolving lights that coloured the darkness for the slower dances in the ballroom where we’d first met.

“We’ll not go back tonight. We might as well make certain whether you’re pregnant or not. I’ll find out about the test. And I’ll meet you after work tomorrow evening, same as we met this evening.”

She was probably right — there was nothing to lose now. I had been careless and stupid, and stupidity is the one thing you’re certain to be punished for, we’d been told it often enough; and here I was being scrupulous in the eye of the disaster, when it was certainly far too late to make a difference.

“I could sure do with some loving tonight,” the pleasure was now free that had been so dearly paid for.

“We’ll leave it for tonight,” I felt sick. “We’ll make certain first.”

“It’s not very long since you were eager enough.”

“There’s nothing I’d like more,” and except to be free altogether it was true, to take this strong woman’s body and enter into it in rage. Nature has many weathers for drawing us within her gates.

“Then what have we to lose?”

“We’ll find out first,” and she began to cry.

“Look,” I rocked her. “We’re in this together. I’m not running out on you or anything. We’ll find out first. And then we’ll see where we’ll go.”

“I’m sorry,” she was smiling through her tears. “I’m happy now. I somehow know everything’ll be all right now.”

“We’ll get a taxi.”

Sleepless, as when I’d been in love, images came to plague me, and they would not leave me. What were once the images of loss became the images that enmesh and fester round a life.

There was a semi-detached house at the head of one of the roads around the Green Goose, shrubbery just beginning to appear above the front garden walls, two iron gates, concrete to the garage door. The roof was red-tiled and the walls were pebble-dashed. A lighted bell above the letter box went ding-dong. Behind the house, on either side of a thin concrete footpath, the long, competing back gardens ran to the glass-topped wall: a piece of lawn, some roses, a cabbage patch, rhubarb, cold frames for early lettuce, raspberry canes that needed cutting back, two apple trees that every year brought vandals. The narrow kitchen was up a step from the back garden, the formica-topped breakfast table, the radio, the clock, the whirring fridge. A carpeted room wasn’t far away. There was a solid table and chairs for compulsory entertaining, some books on shelves, a drinks cabinet, a tiled fireplace, a TV set. Upstairs two cupids kept blissful watch above the double bed and waiting carry-cot. The curtains that hid the road were hung and frilled. Swelling by my side she’d yawn Ο boy before she’d kiss and drill. And proudly, stretching towards the line and beaming benediction on the whole setup, she’d hang out her brand-washed flags as good as any.

When I had cried I cannot live without you, I had cried against the loss of a dream, and believed it was worse than death, since it could not find oblivion. I had thought no suffering could be worse. I was wrong.

I had gone in and suffered, when it was clear my love could not be returned, like the loss of my own life in the other. This now was worse. The Other would now happily lose her life in me and I would live the nightmare. It would be worse than loss. It would be a lived loss, and many must have been caught this way and made to live it.

I called up Peter White, a doctor, a friend from university. We had met fairly frequently for a few years after graduating, to go to pubs and the theatre and once to a rugby international against Scotland at Murrayfield. I had been at his wedding, and afterwards the meetings naturally dwindled, and then stopped. Calling him up out of the past was like calling up a ghost. There are more awkwardnesses than with a total stranger because of the dead barrier of memory.