John McGahern - The Pornographer

My uncle was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, clearing his throat before saying loudly, “We better go now and see that man about the car insurance.” Some people stopped me to shake my hands as I followed him out in an uncaring numbness.

“She looks good,” he said as we got into the big car.

“Who laid her out?” and he named two women.

“They did a nice job. What men do we have to see about the insurance?”

“No man,” he laughed. “It was an excuse to get you out. Haven’t you been in a car crash! We won’t need to go back now till the removal. And I thought we might as well dawnder out to my place. That’s where you’ll be staying tonight. There’s a room made up.”

“What happened in the end?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said as he suddenly turned up the avenue to his new house. “I’ll tell you in the house.”

It was a big slated nineteenth-century farmhouse, five front windows and a solid hall door looking confidently down on the road. We drove round by the cobbled back and parked in the yard, which was completely enclosed by out offices, their red iron roofs dull with rain. It was very warm in the kitchen, and the first thing he did was to shake down the Stanley and pile in more coal. Blue and white mugs hung from hooks on the deal dresser, and an oilcloth in blue and white squares covered the big deal table. Wedding and baptism photos, even one ordination group, hung with the religious pictures around the tall walls. I found it very lovely.

His old face was as excited as a boy’s as he searched my battered face to see his excitement mirrored.

“Well, what do you think?” his voice was nervous.

“I think it’s lovely.”

“I threw in a few extra hundred and they agreed to leave everything as it was. Tables, chairs, beds, dresser — everything.”

“You got away with murder.”

“I’d say, safely — with two murders. You wouldn’t be started till you’d see a thousand pounds in this room, and there are ten rooms.”

“Some woman must have been fond of blue,” I said.

“What do I care what they were fond of?” he chuckled so deep he shook, “It’s ours now!”

I had to turn away because the laughing hurt. He thought I was laughing with him, and he was partly right; for he showed me the rest of the house in such an extravagance of delight that the tears streamed down his face.

“What have you done with the land?”

“It’s stocked, with bullocks. They don’t need much minding.”

“Well, tell me what happened?” I said in an old armchair one side of the Stanley.

“What’ll you have first?”

“I’m all right.”

“You’ll have to have something. It’s your first time in the house.”

“Whiskey, then.”

He opened a cupboard across from the dresser. “Are you sure you wouldn’t sooner something different?” to show that the cupboard was bursting with drinks. The same bottles would probably be there at the same level next Christmas.

“No. Just whiskey,” and he poured me a large tumblerful, turning his back to pour only the minutest nip for himself.

“Well, tell me what happened?” I said, the whiskey making the inside of my mouth smart like hell.

“Well, Cyril will never forget it,” he began powerfully. “She left him everything. And I don’t begrudge him a penny. In the end he earned it, down to the last farthing.”

“How?”

“Well, as soon as she got home she sent for Delehunty and made her will. They spent a long time making it and then she sent for me. She told me straight out that she was leaving everything to Cyril. She’d have left me something but she said she knew I had enough,” his voice thickened and grew hesitant. He had obviously been hurt.

“And you have, of course. You have more than enough.”

“O I told her that. And in no uncertain terms. And I told her as far as I was concerned she could fire her money and houses out into the street, for all I cared.”

“She can’t have taken too kindly to that.”

“No,” he crowed. “She told me to shut up, that she always knew I was an eejit. I told her whether I was an eejit or not she’d never find me giving my money to strangers. She mentioned you, that she was thankful, and all that, and that she’d thought of you, but that you were young and had an education as well as your own place.”

“So Cyril got everything. I’m not surprised.”

“Wait,” he laughed. “The best is on its way. She then sent for Cyril. She told him that she was leaving him everything but that it was on condition he never tried to see her again. He had only bothered with her when she was well and wanting something off her. He hadn’t come near her since she’d got badly sick. And now she didn’t want him at the end.”

“How did you find out this?”

“The poor fella was so upset that he came out here and cried it all out.”

“What did you say?”

“What do you expect? I told him of course that the woman wasn’t in her right mind,” he chuckled. “When it was about the only time she was in her right mind lately.”

“Who took care of her?”

“The nurse was in. And she didn’t even want the nurse. There was an invitation too to a wedding, far out cousins of ours from the mountains, the Meehans. One of the girls was getting married. She sent them a present. But she said that she’d not be at the wedding, that she had a much harder thing to do, and that she wished them as much joy and fun from the wedding as they could get, for one day they’d have to do the same hard thing that she had to do now.”

“Did you see her again?”

“Yesterday morning. I went in to tell her that I had given the Meehans the present, when who did I meet scrubbing the stairs but those two Donnelly sisters. One of them is a friend of Cyril’s. Did you ever notice that when things are rightly bad there’ll always be some stupid woman to be found who’ll have started scrubbing or tidying?”

“What did you do?”

“I ran them.”

“Did she have any idea of this?”

“Not at all. If she was even half right they wouldn’t get within a mile of the place. The nurse was there when I went in and the room was in half darkness. I thought at first that she was talking to the nurse, but then I saw she wasn’t talking to the nurse at all. Her voice was so low that it was hard to hear it, but I think she was talking to your mother, God rest her. Whatever it was it must have been funny for she seemed to be laughing a great deal or it was like as if she was laughing.”

“Was she talking all the time?”

“No. She’d talk and then go quiet as if listening. It’s in those times that she’d start to laugh. Then she’d start up talking again. I suppose the poor thing was going out of her mind in the finish.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No. The nurse told me there was no use. In about five hours after that she went.”

“I’ll miss her. But with the way she was it was an ease.”

“We’ll all miss her. But things have been going wrong with her for a long time. I don’t think they were ever right since the day she married. That was the real turning point.”

“I suppose you’ll close down for the whole of the week?”

“For the whole week, are you joking! There’s enough gone wrong without us going the same way. Jim too was thinking we mightn’t start up for the week but he got a land. We’ll be starting first thing the morning after the funeral.”

Before we left, he shook down the Stanley again and heaped in more coal. “Coal is the only thing that gets up a real heat. I bought five tons back there. Wood is all right but only for getting the fire going. You’ll find the place will be roasting when we get back.”