John McGahern - The Pornographer

“How is the saw mill?”

“Bad luck to the saw mill. You’d swear it was the centre of the universe. Nothing will happen to the same saw mill, and more’s the pity. He couldn’t even hide how pleased he was when he didn’t have to drive me up.”

“He’s all right. I’m fond of him.”

“Oh yes, he’ll never be stuck for someone to stand up for him, the big haveril, as long as he has you, and if you don’t watch out you’ll wind up just like him, a selfish old bachelor.”

I half expected her to go through motions of protest when I put down the bottle of brandy but instead she seized it like a lifeline, “God bless you. I knew you’d not forget it.”

In London, all prayers were being more than answered. More and more belief in heaven grew. Even though she’d been foolish and had been left vulnerable there was someone who was looking after them up there, for she was no longer alone. Just when they were afraid Jonathan’s wife would discharge herself, find her installed in the basement, and let all hell loose, what happened, but in a crazy fit, didn’t she jump from the hospital window and kill herself. After all these years Jonathan was now free.

Jonathan was now pressing his proposal of marriage more fiercely and wanted to adopt the child as his own so that she and the child would inherit all that he owned. For this he demanded, and rightly demanded, that I should give up all rights, which would make us more strangers than if we’d never met. If I changed my mind afterwards and attempted to approach either her or the child, I’d be arrested at once.

I could hardly believe my luck. Not only did my deep hope seem likely to be answered but to be given the force of the law to boot. At one stroke all the connection would be wiped out. It would be as if nothing had ever happened. We had held the body brute in our instinct, let the seed beat in the warm darkness, and were still free. I’d be glad to sign whatever was demanded. My own resolution stood and I felt that she’d be very foolish not to marry Jonathan. I was sorry for the poor part I had played in the sad business and wished her happiness.

I didn’t hear anything for days and began to write “The Colonel and Mavis Take a Trip on the Shannon”. I went in and out of the hospital with the bottle of brandy each evening like a man attending daily Mass. I started to see Maloney again.

“This woman, apparently, is to be married in London,” I told him.

“This isn’t right,” he said. “You shouldn’t get off like this. The averages should have come down instead of going up. And who is the ass who’s about to bear your burden into Jerusalem?”

“He’s the rich man I told you about who came from London to see her here. She’s been living in the basement of his house in Kensington. He also owns newspapers.”

“Nobody owns newspapers any more.”

“Well, he’s on boards, has shares. It may be magazines and newspapers. Already she has a job on a women’s paper off the Strand.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jonathan.”

“What’s his proper name?”

“I don’t know. That’s all I’ve ever known him as.”

“I could find out,” he threatened.

“Why?”

“That sort of person is always useful to know. There may be a take-over. We may need to expand. You should start to cultivate him, old man, now that, if I may be so crude, you have a foot, a heartbeat, in the door.”

“I don’t know his name, you’ll have to take my word for it. She’s known him for years, probably through Amalgamated Waterways, but she’s never volunteered much about him to me other than that his name is Jonathan, and I’ve never wanted to know more.”

“Could it be Jonathan Martin?” he whistled. “He has a few small business things here. He looks like something between a walrus and a very small elephant but he certainly has the do-re-mi. If that’s who’s in question, she’s doing more than well for herself. But why this rush of marrying? Because she’s pregnant?”

“His wife has just jumped out of a window. That leaves him free after years.”

“So that’s it? I couldn’t imagine a guy with that much power being let run round for long. He’d attract loads of broads, all mad about his moral and spiritual welfare of course. Anything that’d help them into an ocelot coat and a Rolls Royce.”

“It’s all due to God. God arranged for the woman to jump out the window at the right moment,” I made the mistake of laughing.

“And God has arranged that you’re going to write ‘Mavis and the Colonel Take a Tip on the Shannon,” he glowered when I started to laugh. “I hate cheap laughs at the Divine.”

“I’ve started it. You’ll have it in a few days.”

“Good. Very good. All this, you realize, has far more interesting possibilities. But I’m a philosopher. I’m content with small morsels. A small morsel is my nugget of gold,” he bared his teeth at me.

When I had no word for a long time I began to think they might be married. The last I’d heard was that she’d gone with Jonathan to his wife’s cremation in Golders Green. She’d hated it, the dreadful music, the coffin moving on silent gliss till it disappeared behind the flap, a poor man behind the flap, directing the coffin to the ovens. There was a floral wreath in the figure of eight on top of the coffin and they’d to hold it so that the flap didn’t sweep it off.

It was the bone dust you took home after the bones were raked from the oven after it had been put in a drum they called a pulverizer. Our own custom of lowering the coffin with ropes into freshly dug graves was like a bunch of wild primroses compared to this ghoulish wreath of arum lilies. The organ especially turned the whole thing into a farce.

I wondered if they’d married in a church or a registry office, but mostly I marvelled at my luck. Other than never to have met, never to have slept together, for that fatal seed never to have swum, it could hardly have turned out better. But had they married? If they had they probably had gone on a glamorous honeymoon, a cruise perhaps. Circumstances being what they were, I could hardly expect a having-a-wonderful-time card, while each evening I went in with the brandy to the hospital, and wrote the story.

e, and placed him in the shelter of the boat-house, leaving the unfinished bo

The Colonel collected Mavis outside the office and they drove in the stream of traffic out of the city. It didn’t build any speed till it got past Lucan, but even then they found themselves continually shut in behind slow trucks and milk tankers.

“Ireland will soon be as jammed up as everywhere else. That’s what’s wonderful about the rivers and lakes. They’re empty. Isn’t it exciting to be spending a whole weekend away from people?” Mavis said tiredly.

“O people are all right, as long as they’re well shaped,” the Colonel leered. “And if they’re not well shaped, by Jove, I still find them all right as long as they’re willing, as long as they’re not afraid. What’s wonderful is being with you. To hell with the rivers and the lakes. It’s the scene that’s important, love, you and me, not the bloody setting.”

“It’s all right for you to say that. You don’t work all week in a typing pool, with that bastard McKenzie blowing hot and cold.”

“Why don’t you take McKenzie into your rich, irresistible quim and drown him in blessedness.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Mavis yawned. “And it wouldn’t work. There are some people so in love with their artificial limbs that they wouldn’t throw them away if cured.”

“Never mind psychology. Give us a hand. If someone is strangling you it’s no use knowing that he wasn’t loved by his mother.”