John McGahern - The Pornographer

“No,” Mavis stretched full length in the cabin. “I’m beginning to feel … If I drink any more I’ll be out of commission,” she laughed.

For a moment Michael seemed alarmed but with a swig of the whiskey his old jauntiness returned.

“Have you ever gone in for the girls, Michael?” the Colonel slapped him on the knee.

“Not in any serious way. I stick to this,” he raised his glass triumphantly. “It’s all right for the rich. But my generation, seeing the hardship our parents had to go through, decided to stay clear. Maybe we were as well off. Anyhow we hadn’t the worry.”

“No wonder the country is in such a poor state, but privately we’re beginning not to be able to contain ourselves. But there’s enough for everybody. You don’t mind, Mavis? We don’t want to sit down to meat — without offering our guest some.”

“Not in the least. I was going to suggest it myself. He’s strong, he’s healthy, he’s handsome. What more can a woman ask?” and she stretched her long lovely limbs, the thighs gleaming bare all the way into the darkness.

“I was beginning to fancy Michael myself. Rough sacking can give a great thrill after silk.”

The Colonel started to unbutton the blouse slowly, letting the rich soft young breasts swing free; and he turned to Michael, “Forgive the liberty. Of course you’ll be the first, old chap.”

Finishing his whiskey, and rising in slow righteous anger, Michael said, “I’m getting out. You’re nothing but a pair of fucking huars. I don’t know which of ye is the worse, the young huar, or you, you old bald fool that should know better.”

“Don’t let him go,” Mavis shouted at the insult. “We’ll teach him.”

Michael swung at the Colonel, who gripped him easily at the elbow, held him as he went down, where he struggled until the Colonel hit him, and he went still.

“In spite of all that drinking he’s as strong as a horse, but you can’t beat the old commando training.”

“He’s not hurt, is he?”

“He’ll come through in a few minutes. I just gave him the one-two. He’ll probably have a headache for a while.”

“Tie him. Tie him and strip him. We’ll give him an eyeful when he comes to.”

They both undressed him, Mavis gripping the limp penis before letting it fall back. “O I’m glad he didn’t join. It’d be worse than Lough Derg to have to fuck with him. He mustn’t have washed since he last went to Bundoran and that must be twenty years before. To hell with him, but we’ll still give him an eyeful.”

They tied him with the sheets.

“Shall I bugger him? I rather like the dirt.”

“Hold it. I’ll take all of it after that. An old boy like that, drinking all round the country, laughing at women, boasting he’d escaped — escaped from what? — wait till he comes to, we’ll give him something to see.”

Her fingers fluttered toward her true and trusty friend. The Colonel strained above her, bent to kiss her lips, touch the small thumbs of the breasts, and then went beneath the shaved armpits. They waited till they heard a stir. His eyes were open. “Let me out,” Michael shouted, and they laughed as they watched his futile struggle on the floor. “See this.” And they forgot him.

He lifted up her buttocks and drew down a pillow beneath, feasting on the soft raised mound, the pink of the inside lips under the hair. When she put her arms round his shoulders the stiff pink nipples were pulled up like thumbs, and he stooped and took them, turn and turn about in his teeth, and drew them up till she moaned. Slowly he opened the lips in the soft mound on the pillows, smeared them in their own juice, and slowly moved the helmet up and down in the shallows of the mound. As he pulled up the nipples in his teeth, moving slowly on the pillow between the thighs now thrown wide, she cried, “Harder, hurt me do anything you want with me, I’m crazy for it.” She moaned as she felt him go deeper within her, swollen and sliding on the oil seeping out from the walls. “O Jesus,” she cried as she felt it searching deeper within her, driving faster and faster. “Fuck me, fuck me, Ο Jesus,” he felt her nails dig into his back as the hot seed spurted deliciously free, beating into her. And when they were quiet he said, “You must let me,” and his bald head went between her thighs on the pillow, his rough tongue parting the lips to lap at the juices and then to tease the clitoris till she started to go crazy again.

“Wait,” she said. “We’ve forgotten our friend on the floor. Is he snoring?”

“The blackguard,” the Colonel shouted. “Did you ever see such an unholy erection?”

“It’s huge.”

Mavis took him in her soft hands while Michael turned away and moaned, “You’re lucky we’re kind,” she said. “We could have left you like this forever,” and she bent her hot body, drawing until he started to thrust towards her. “It’s like milking an old bull.” The spunk started to beat, and he cried as it fell, throb after throb, beating out, years of waste.

“We may have started something we can’t stop. He may rampage the countryside now.”

“What will we do with him?”

“I have something to give him,” the Colonel put a pill in the whiskey and forced him to drink. They waited till he was snoring, untied him, dressed him, carried him out of the, and placed him in the shelter of the boat-house, leaving the unfinished bo by his side.

“He’ll wake in about half an hour. He’ll be all right.”

“What do you think he’ll do when he wakes?”

“He’ll do nothing. He’ll think he was dreaming. Doesn’t the whole country look as if it’s wetdreaming its life away. He’ll want to be no exception. He’s a prime example of yourtrue, conforming citizen.”

I drove them up through the white mist over the river in the morning, half-remembered cattle and tree trunks and half branches on the ghostly banks. There were two flaxen-haired boys and a willow of a girl in from the country at the Bush Hotel. They took the girl up the river with them to the village, and left her with the fat man. “I could sleep for a month,” the fat man said, he’d go back to Carrick that evening on a paper run. It had been easy, the old technique, morsel leading to juicy morsel, to lying down to several solid meals.

They went alone through the lake, the beauty of the glass wall of water touching Mavis. “It’d be nice to have a summer place on the hill up there overlooking the Weir.”

“Yes, but you’d get tired. There’s nothing more tiring than so-called beauty. It saps energy because it’s an idea. You’d never know what you’d pick up off the boats. And we’d have the insurance of ourselves if the fishing turned out to be poor,” he put his arm round her shoulders as they went through the locks and kissed.

As I brought them naked into one another’s arms a last time —“straight and affectionate”—the boat at anchor in the arms of the wooded bay, I felt sick enough to want to turn away from what I saw, to shout at them to stop. The old plays were not wrong: there are single moments of weakness when our whole life can be changed to nightmare, set in a sweet flutter so faint that we are uncertain if it touched us at all in passing; but already we had fallen. I remembered how grateful the two of us had been the next day for the boat after that cursed night. The business of having to take it back down the river had kept us from getting on each other’s nerves. And now Maloney had his story.

I had a second drink while waiting for him to finish reading in the Elbow. He read it standing at the counter. He didn’t touch his drink but stayed completely silent till he’d finished.

“It doesn’t quite phosphoresce with your usual glow, but it’s all right. We’ll publish it. Anyhow the Shannon makes a change from Madagascar. You’re a younger version of the Colonel of course?”