John McGahern - The Pornographer

She was in a high state of excitement when we met the next evening, full of her dinner at the Hibernian with Jonathan. I couldn’t resist feeling that she was having the time of her life.

“Jonathan was waiting for me in the foyer. In his pinstripe and flowing bow, silver hair, he looked extraordinarily distinguished, like an ambassador or something. The table had red roses. We had oysters, Dover sole, cheese, and we drank too much. Jonathan had an enormous cigar the waiter cut for him, with his brandy. And then, suddenly, both of us started to cry, in the middle of the full restaurant.’ It’s such a pity, love, that it’s not our child. We’d be married. We’d have a whole wonderful life together,’ he said. ‘Who’d think two years ago when I pressed you to come to London that we’d be sitting here like this. Life deals us strange cards.’

“He was wonderful. He’s making everything so easy. His wife is in hospital again and he lives alone in this enormous house in Kensington. And do you know what he’s going to do? He’s going to do up the whole basement part of the house as a separate flat, and I can live there till the child is born. He says, too, that there’ll be no trouble getting me a job on one of the several magazines, that I needn’t confine myself to Water ¬ ways , that if I can write about waterways I can write about theatres, London restaurants or parks. Once I get the hang of it it’ll all be the same thing. It’s like a dream come true.”

“Where is he now?”

“He came to see me but he’s using the visit to do some business as well. We’re having a nightcap later in the hotel after he’s seen his guests off. And I’m having lunch with him at the airport tomorrow just before he flies off. We’re going to write the letter of resignation together.”

“I can see little place for me in London in such a new setup,” I ventured cautiously.

“That’s what Jonathan says. He says that if we’re not to be married that it doesn’t make any sense being together, that we’d only get deeper and deeper involved with each other, that it’d make a separation worse.”

I waited in silence, hardly daring to believe. What I’d longed for seemed to be falling like ripe fruit into my hands.

“Jonathan says that you’d be far more help to me by staying here. You could help me with money, with everything, all the help you can give now, if we’re not to be married.’”

I felt like a badger must feel among blackthorns when someone inadvertently opens the teeth of the trap. I was afraid to go free in case by moving at all it might prove not true.

“You have a whole month to think about it. But what Jonathan says seems to make sense,” I made the first cautious move, staring down in amazement at the bared teeth of the loose trap. I could go free.

“Jonathan and I wrote out the letter of resignation at the airport, in the upstairs lounge. We laughed a great deal over the words beg or wish or desire or state . And then he just dictated it straight and I took it down. Then we went and posted it. As it dropped I said, ‘There goes my future. All those years with so much being contributed each year towards my marriage gratuity.’ We were both too nervous for lunch, but Jonathan insisted on buying a bottle of champagne. It’s strange how coincidences happen. It was his birthday. I had never known when his birthday was before. He’s fifty-seven. ‘To London Airport. I’ll be waiting for you there. You may seem old to your young man but you look awfully young and pretty to me,’ he said.”

“You are beautiful and young.”

“I sure picked a winner, didn’t I?”

“We both had bad luck.”

“How?”

“Everything happened too soon,” I said. “We never had a chance. What did you do after you left the airport?”

“Well then, I caught myself rushing back to the bank. I’d got the morning off and then after sending in my resignation I was worried and rushing back. Are you crazy, I said to myself. You’ve worked for them for over twenty years, and you’ve got not a thing out of it, and now you’re rushing back, when even if you were caught trying to burn the building it’d take at least a month to fire you. It was hard to get used to, so I turned back for home. I knew I’d find my aunt alone at home and I wanted to get the whole thing over with. It was only when I was near the house that I had second thoughts and I wished I had gone straight back to the bank from the airport.

“The kitchen door was open and she was in the garden, her rubber gloves on, at her roses. She asked me if I had a headache or something and I decided to bungle it through.’ No, Aunt Josephine, I took the day off. I’ve been offered a job on a magazine in London and I’ve resigned from the bank. Don’t worry: I’m not going at once. It takes a month for the resignation to take effect and I’m sure I can withdraw it at any time before then.’ You should have seen her face. ‘Have you thought about the pension you’ll lose?’ were the first words when she found her voice. ‘How will you manage all on your own in a place like London?’ So the story is out — I’m going to London to seek fame and fortune.”

Angrily she intercepted my glance towards her body. “No,” she said. “The two per cent chance of error is gone. I practically didn’t make it to the bathroom this morning. Early morning sickness.”

“What do you want to do now?” I asked.

“I want to go back to your place,” she said. “I know it may sound exciting, going to London — but I know, I know I’ll hardly be in London before I start missing you. The fame and fortune is all a lie. It’s going to be a hard summer and a longer autumn and winter. And I’ll not have you. I’m going to need a lot of loving in the next month to get me through all that length of time without you.”

“It seems I’m not going to London after all,” I said to Maloney. We met in the bar of the Clarence. He had insisted that we start to meet regularly since I was soon going to be away for at least the most of nine months, and he had picked the Clarence as out of the way and suitably grey.

For the hot day he wore baggy flannels, an expensively ragged corduroy jacket, and his buttoned-down shirt was open enough to display a wealth of grey hair on the chest.

“A false alarm,” he chortled. “Following in my own august footsteps.”

“No such luck,” I said.

“You’re going to do a skunk, then?” he looked at me in admiration, and started to laugh, a secretive high-pitched laugh, “I always thought you were one of those priested types, a lot in the head but not much on the ground. That you’d do the decent, follow your conscience, even if it meant tearing your balls off, but apparently I was wrong,” he shouted.

“No,” I ignored what he’d said. “She knows this rich Englishman with a house in Kensington, a crazy wife, several companies. He’s been an admirer of her for years. It’s just poured out in the wash. He’s already flown in from London and out again. They had dinner in the Hibernian, and he’s taking charge of the whole business. She’s going to live in the basement of his Kensington house and he’s getting her a job writing for one of his magazines. Naturally he doesn’t want me to go with her to London.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? This broad must be good looking. I thought she was just an ordinary turkey, a bit dim as to the facts of life.”

“She’s very good looking and this Englishman is old. I can hardly believe my luck. It’s almost too good. I hope she marries him. If she’d marry him it’d take care of the whole mess in one beautiful stroke.”

“I detect a disgusting note of self-congratulation,” he changed. “And it won’t do. It won’t do at all. You’ve behaved stupidly, even by your own admission. You’ve got this woman into a frightful mess. In your conceit you refuse to marry her though she is a beauty, a far cry from your own appearance. And your bad behaviour and general situation is making us feel good. It’s making us all feel very good.”