John McGahern - The Pornographer

“How?”

“How can you ask such a question? Your behaviour has dropped the moral averages to zero overnight. It makes some of our own reprehensible past acts practically beatific. We’re disgusted with you.”

“Anyhow you won’t want the Shannon River thing written now.”

“That’s what you think. I want every word of it. And I want both history and myth respected. There are too many people up to their elbows in myth without the slightest respect for history.”

“Why don’t you let up?”

“Would you if you’d just lost a Paris trip and was barely consoled by looking forward to a few nice saunters round Soho and found that even that was pulled out from under your feet because a friend wasn’t being asked to pay his bills?” “You’re too much,” I said.

“I know I am,” he beamed suddenly. “I work very hard at it.” In four weeks she would go to London. Jonathan would meet her at the airport and take her to the basement flat in Kensington. In seven to eight months she would give birth to the child. It was still all that time off, time enough for something to change it back, time enough for it to never happen. Vague and fragile as that sense was, it was enough to blur the sharpness, keep it farther off.

“I’m going to need a lot of loving to get me through all that length of time in London,” she said again. “And since you’re always muddled as to where we’ll meet,” she laughed, “We’ll decide the meeting places for the next four weeks tonight.”

There was no point meeting in the middle of town, she’d have to be there to say her own farewells, the goodbyes being prepared for her at Amalgamated Waterways and the bank, and she wanted as much as possible to keep our lives separate from them. So on wet evenings or on evenings when there was a threat of rain we’d meet in Gaffney’s bar. And if it was fine we’d meet half-way in Calderwood Avenue. She was in high energetic spirits that evening, insisting on counting the small almond and cherry trees in Calderwood. There were two hundred and forty-nine trees in the avenue. She wore a blue ribbon that was too young for her and took it off and tied it round the one hundredth and twenty-fifth tree.

“People will think we’re crazy,” she said as she took my arm to walk back to the room. One evening out of the four weeks we had to meet in Gaffney’s but we saw the blue silk ribbon round the bole of the one hundredth and twenty-fifth almond tree so regularly that we did not notice it fade and grow ragged in the dust and sun.

There is not much difference between seeing someone every evening who is to go to London in four weeks and going to hospital every evening to see someone who is dying, except that we can measure more accurately, and hence control it, a departure for London and imagine more easily what will happen when it’s reached. And each evening as I went to meet her I did not think there was much difference (except in the quality of affection) from going in to see my aunt in the hospital and meeting at the ribboned almond tree, except my male body in its cloth covering replaced the brandy bottle in its brown parcel.

She was always on time. Walking towards her down the long avenue of cherries and almonds proved far worse than walking into my aunt’s awareness down the hospital corridor during those first visits. As soon as she’d see me come her walk would change, as if a band had suddenly struck up, and she’d start to smile and wave. If I waved in answer, there’d follow an excruciating few minutes of waving, smiling, walking up to the beribboned tree.

“Right on the dot,” she’d say as she kissed. I tried coming a few minutes late but as soon as she’d see me along the line of almonds she’d take off towards me waving, smiling, walking. “You’re late,” she’d say. “The ribbon is half-way, a symbol of equality.” I started to come early, examining the parched grass around the roots of the almond tree as she came waving, smiling down the line.

“I guess that grass must be awfully interesting,” she said as her high heels clicked close.

“I’m not much good at waving,” I said.

“That is, I suppose, a tick-off for me. I can do nothing right.”

“Why should it be? I’m just not good at it, that’s all. It may well be what they call a character defect.”

Once or twice we went to suburban cinemas but in good weather we cooled our thirst in pubs, walking sometimes afterwards some miles out to the sea in the lovely evenings; and always we went back to the room.

“I need all the loving I can get to see me through the months in London,” it sounded as if she was working hard at getting a suntan against the winter. Her body was as sleek and beautiful as when we’d met. Morbidly I’d let my fingers trail along her stomach but there was no sign of swelling. The only pleasure was in staying outside oneself, watching the instinct that had constructed this prison suffer its own exhaustion within its walls and instead of bounding with refreshed curiosity to some new boundary of sense, having to take off its coat, and wield a painful pick. In this bright early summer weather it was always daylight when she left.

Sometimes we touched danger. “Jonathan rang today,” she said, and when I didn’t reply asked sharply, “Are you not curious what he had to say?”

“What did he say?”

“He said if his wife will agree to a divorce we might be married. Have you nothing to say to that?”

“I can’t very well object to Jonathan marrying you.”

“He says that if we got married he’s willing to accept the child as his own, but that you’ll have to sign over all your rights to the child. Will you do that? It means you can never lay eyes on the child again in your life,” she continued angrily.

“I’ll be glad to do that.”

“Have you no curiosity about the child?”

“None.”

“I don’t know, there must be something wrong with you, something missing. I don’t know whether you picked it up writing that pornography stuff or not but there’s a lack of feeling that makes me feel sorry for you. Often I sincerely pity you.”

“I can’t do much about that,” I avoided.

“O boy I sure picked a winner.”

Another evening she asked, “Do you play tennis?”

“No, I’ve never played. Why?”

“I used to be a fairly good player. This is the first spring I haven’t played though it must be five or six years since I was on the club team. Anyhow they heard I was going to London and they’re giving a dance and presentation. Would you like to come to the dance?”

“I think I better stay out of everything. It’d only mix things up, especially with Jonathan in it now.”

“What has he got to do with you?”

“You said yourself you’d want the child to appear completely Jonathan’s. And since that’s the case I would like to keep out of it as much as possible. That makes sense, doesn’t it? “and she was silent for a long time.

“Of course, since your rights mean nothing to you, it’s no sacrifice for you to give them up,” she said bitterly.

“I never pretended it was any other way,” I answered.

These parties were the only nights I didn’t see her, but even so they were no holiday. Hardly able to believe I was escaping so lightly, I felt I had the whole frail month in my hands, to be guided as delicately as possible towards the airport. From these functions she brought back trophies. A large clock with a scroll of names, an ornate silver tray, an ice bucket. Amalgamated Waterways gave her a cheque.

“There were speeches about my courage, how I was throwing mundane security over in order to seek fame and fortune. That I made them all seem small. If only they knew the truth,” she said, and I did not answer. Even within the boundaries of the four weeks, I was aware of possibilities within myself for doing something wild and stupid. Troubled by my own confusions in meeting her at the idiotically beribboned almond tree, I started to take down books in the room, unconsciously searching for some general light, as I’d gone out for allies at the first news. It was an ungenerous attitude, but my position was hardly aristocratic. I eventually found a sentence which brought me to a sudden stop: “Everybody must feel that a man who hates any person hates that person the more for troubling him with expressions of love; or, at least, it adds to hatred the sting of disgust.” I wrote it down, and kept it about my person like a scapular, as if the general expressions of the confused and covered feelings could licence and control them.