John McGahern - The Pornographer

“You never come in to see us now. You just come in to see Auntie.”

It was a long way to walk, to keep walking, she standing there behind me, my aunt’s laughter probably intercepted by this sudden violence, wondering with some trepidation how it would turn out. And then the natural fear, not to look back, to keep walking to the lift, to escape, to leave rage and mockery behind like a fired gun, suddenly went so far in flight that it stopped: this is absurd, this is ridiculous, if you don’t face it now it’ll rankle forever; and I turned and walked towards where she stood, her hands on her hips, rigid.

“I’m sorry. I’ll explain it. Can I meet you?”

“I suppose that’s possible, if you’d want that.”

“I do. When are you off work?”

“At eight”

“I’ll ring you at eight-thirty at the home.”

“If you want that,” she was close to tears.

“I do. I’ll ring. I hope we’ll be able to meet.”

The cool was all the more cool since it was just barely being held, a shiver of a cord could break it, but it carried me back to my aunt’s bed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was upset. I forgot you were going home tomorrow, but I’ll be down within a week.”

“O you’re a sly one,” she said laughing, for the whole muffled comedy was now so extreme that it didn’t matter what words were said. “O my God, bad luck to you anyway. I never thought I’d live to see the day. You’re a crowned pair. Bad luck to both of yez.”

When I got out of the hospital I felt myself trembling, feeling the whole naked humiliation of life that we mostly manage to keep at bay with all those weapons that can only be praised.

I rang at the exact time I said I would and she must have been waiting by the phones in the hallway for she picked it up on the second ring.

“Will you meet me?”

“For what?”

“Nothing. Just to meet. I can hardly blame you after today if you don’t want to.”

“You know you don’t have to meet me?”

“I know that. I’m asking if you’ll meet me.”

“When?”

“Tonight. In an hour’s time in O’Connell Street?”

“Where?”

“Under Clery’s clock at nine-thirty,” and she put the phone down without affirming whether she’d be there or not.

I would have waited until half-nine or so if she hadn’t come but she came into the space beneath the clock at ten past.

She wore a grey herring-bone suit with a plastic brooch on the collar, a brown butterfly. She was not, I suppose, what is generally called beautiful, but she looked beautiful to me, young and healthy and strong, the face open and uncomplicated beneath its crown of shining black hair, a young woman rooted in her only life.

“I’m sorry about today,” I said.

“I’m sorry too. I was ashamed I shouted after you,” she said but there was no plea as there was in my apology, just a plain admission.

“Would you like to come for a drink or go somewhere else?”

“I’d like to go to the pictures,” she said.

We went to the Carleton, where The World of Harold Lloyd was showing. She sat stiffly by my side in the back seats, staring studiously at the screen, and not until the turkey got loose in the bus did she begin to laugh. When I risked my arm around her, she stiffened again, and I withdrew it. I had found an aggressive and unpleasant note in my own laughter, laughing in defiance of her silence rather than at anything on the screen. Once I was silent her laughter seemed to grow.

“Did you like it?” I asked as we went out into the unreality of the night street.

“It was great fun,” she said.

She said she didn’t want a drink or coffee because if we did we’d miss the bus, and the difference of the few minutes wasn’t worth the taxi fare. When I asked if I could come with her on the bus she answered, “If you want to.”

We walked in silence from the bus into the hospital grounds, past the hospital. The silence didn’t change when we went into the same lighted room with the TV set and couches and armchairs and sat on the same couch where she’d let me take away the white piece of cloth that had gone out among the gulls. When I moved towards her I felt both her hands against my chest.

“That’s all that you’re after, isn’t it?”

“No. It’s not all but it’s certainly part of it. Will you come out with me again?” I rose.

“Maybe you’d be better off just coming in to see Auntie?”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “Anyhow my aunt is going home tomorrow. What about next week? Next Tuesday? Will you let me take you out to a meal? I want to tell you something.”

“Why can’t you tell it now?”

“I don’t want to. It’d take too long.”

Though it lingered on the lips the kiss she allowed me was too wary to hint at any future, remember any past.

She looked lovely when I met her outside the Trocadero on Tuesday and I told her so. There is no better climate than separateness for loveliness to grow.

There was so much pretty confusion and smiling and choosing what to eat that the waiter helped her choose.

“What do you think of the place?”

“It’s expensive,” she said.

“Not compared with some other places,” I tried to think of what places she must have eaten in with the older man in the photograph. I thought of soda bread and tea and a hotel beside the river in Ballina.

“It is to me,” she said. “What were you to tell me?”

“We’ll wait until we get the wine.” When the wine came I said, “Do you remember that night when we met at the dance and I asked you what you’d do if you got pregnant?” and she blushed. “I didn’t believe you when you said you’d throw yourself in the Liffey,” I continued.

“I would take pills or something. I couldn’t face into my family that way. I couldn’t.”

“You’d think that till it happened. I was going to tell you that night and I didn’t. I’ve got someone pregnant.”

“Are you going to marry her?” she coloured even more than before.

“No.”

“And what’s she going to do?”

“She’s going to have the child. In London. In a few months.”

“What’ll she do then?”

“Keep the child or have it adopted.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. I thought it better to tell you. That’s why I didn’t ring you. There was trouble enough without dragging you in.”

“Why didn’t you marry her?”

“I thought that’s what I’d have to do when it happened first. But then it grew clear that I’d only marry her to leave her. When that was certain there didn’t seem much point.”

“But why?”

“I couldn’t stand her.”

“But you slept with her?” she seemed genuinely shocked.

“She was good looking. That’s not living with someone, setting up house with them, marrying them.”

“But you must have told her something.”

“I told her that I wanted to sleep with her and that that was as much as ever it would be. It saved me in a way, but I don’t find much credit in that either. If someone wants to sleep with you, you have very little to lose by being straight, even brutally straight. They’ll trick it out in some way to make it acceptable. And I had nothing to lose. I didn’t care whether she slept with me or not.”

“It sounds very hard,” she said.

“It’s what I wanted to tell you,” I ended. “That’s why I didn’t ring you up when I got back from London. The night we met at that dance was a wonderful night for me. But I’m not free, at least not until after this child comes into the world. I didn’t think there was any point trying to inveigle you into my mess. That’s why I didn’t ring, why I bolted when I discovered you in the ward.”