John McGahern - The Pornographer

“You mean to say you had to pay more than that?”

“You must be daft. Not half it.”

After we’d tortuously reached the right figure, which I’d to tell him was so low he should have been up for swindling, he wiped tears of pleasure away with the backs of fists.

“That’ll do you,” he laughed as he scolded. “That’s enough.”

“You must admit you got it cheap.”

“Well, it wasn’t too dear. I’ll admit that much. I could have made a profit on it since anyhow.”

“You know you were welcome to use my house. In fact I was hoping that you would. It needs living in.”

“I know that but sure you’ll live in it yourself. It’s coming to the time when I believe if a man hasn’t his own house he has nothing.”

His own state had always been the ideal state, the proper centre of aspiration for everyman.

“I thought you weren’t going to leave while she was ill,” I reminded him.

“Well, I haven’t left yet.”

“Does she know that you bought the place?”

He grimaced with hurt as he told, “She said I was a fierce eejit, that at my age a one-roomed hut close to a church would be more in my line. But then she’s sick. That woman hasn’t been herself for a long time. She’s not been minding her business for ages. And things has been going from bad to worse between me and Cyril.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it got so bad, one evening he had the drink to do the talking for him and he was going on about me being in the place and not paying, when I always paid far more than I took. Anyhow I took the key out of my pocket and threw it on the floor.’ Pick it up,’ I said, ‘and only one of us will walk out that door.’ After that,” he chuckled blackly, “It was about time I thought of looking for my own place.”

“Why didn’t Cyril come with her?”

“Why didn’t Cyril do a lot of things? Cyril’ll not stir himself now, as long as there’s anybody in the world left able to move.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go home on the train. I want you to ring for Jim to meet me off the train. He can take the big car or the truck. If he’s not around someone will get word to him. Then you better go in to see if that woman has come round,” he was all orders.

“What happened to her?”

“She just fell. At the top of the stairs. She was lucky she didn’t roll down. She was supposed to go into hospital a few days before that and didn’t. Lucky the ambulance was there and able to take her, I came with her in the ambulance.”

“Have you eaten?”

“No. I haven’t had a bite. I’m starved.”

We had a mixed grill in the North Star across from the station, and I saw him to the train, using the fact that I’d to phone ahead for Jim to meet him in order to avoid the awkwardness of those minutes that wait for the train to go.

“I don’t suppose it’ll be long until I have to be down now,” I referred to the impending funeral.

“No,” he said confidently, as if some certainty was a matter of rejoicing. “It won’t be long, but you will go in to see her?”

“I’ll go in as soon as I make the call,” and he was satisfied, making a careless gesture of dismissal. How confident and full of well-being he was compared to the small shaken figure that had got off the train that sunny day in early spring to visit her in the hospital. Death had been well reduced from beauty as well as terror. It happened to people who were foolish enough to cease minding their business.

He had exaggerated her state. I thought I’d find her in a coma but she was completely conscious though very weak.

“Is your uncle gone home?” was her only question and when I nodded she smiled before she let her face fall. She recovered her strength so rapidly in the next few days that I thought I’d resume the normal visits. I took her in a bottle of brandy.

“God bless you but I don’t need that any more. It’s cost you enough already, all those old bottles.”

“There’s lots more bottles,” I protested.

“No. I’m taking the pills. You don’t need anything while you’re taking the pills.”

“I thought you didn’t trust the pills,” with every fumbling sentence I was losing ground in the face of her calm.

“I trust the pills good enough — for what I have to do. When you take them you don’t feel anything. In a few days I’ll be out of this old place. I won’t be coming back. I’ve fought long enough and hard enough and it’s beaten me, bad luck to it,” she even laughed.

“You can’t say that.”

“I can say that because it’s the bitter truth and I’ve earned it. I’m not worried. I was just thinking that there’s already far more people that I’ve been close to in my lifetime on the other side than on this side now. There’s some good stories now I’ll have to tell them. I’m afraid there’s many a laugh we’ll have to have over most of the stories,” her eyes were shining. “I’ll have to start looking to see if that uncle of yours can be given extra space up there as soon as I arrive, for no doubt he’ll want to bring that bloody old saw mill with him, not to talk of this doting farm he’s just bought.”

I’d to turn away, “I’ll be in early tomorrow.”

“You might as well ring your uncle. To tell him to come up for me the day after tomorrow. That I’m going home,” I heard her add. “Anyhow we can settle it tomorrow.”

I hate tears, hate that impotent rage against the whole fated end of life they turn to, and when I fought them back I was embarrassed by the bottle of brandy still in my hands, like a coat I’d been given to hold by someone who had forgotten to come back.

Two days later I helped her into the big car outside the hospital and drove her and my uncle out of the city. She was practically gay, harassing my uncle’s stolidity with sharp wit. He was well insulated against all suffering, wearing a coat of embarrassed righteousness far thicker than his black crombie which seemed to proclaim, “You see the compromising sort of situations people who insist on being stupid, who do not mind their business force you into.” As before, at Maynooth I left them to get the bus back into the city. As I kissed her frailty our silence seemed to acknowledge that we’d never see one another again. Her coldness shook me, her perfect mastery. It was if he she’d completely taken leave of life, and any movement back was just another useless chore, and everything — me, my uncle, I doubted if Cyril could even light her eyes now — had become boringly equal.

“My aunt was in the hospital and is gone home,” I told her when we met, unable to keep from touching her black hair.

“I know. Some of the doctors were annoyed that she was brought to us when she collapsed. She should have been taken to a local hospital. There’s nothing we can do for her any more.”

“She has money. You know what influence is in a small place. They’d think the Dublin hospital would be better, and she’d have to go to the best. Anyhow she’ll not be back. It’s all neat enough. There’s only two telegrams to wait for now. A birth and a death.”

“Maybe she’ll not send word about the child.”

“You think she might land on the doorstep?”

“No. That she’d think her own interests would be best served by staying separate. That she could do anything she wants with the child.”

“She’ll be able to do that anyhow.”

I gave her the letters to read. She read them, but very reluctantly.

“What do you think of her and the whole business?” I asked.

“What does it matter what I think? No matter what I think it’s useless,” she refused to be drawn.

The telegram came five days after Christmas, announcing the birth. I just waited.