John McGahern - The Pornographer

I watched the sun cross and recross the carriages as the train came in between the pillars, lighting the grey roofs; and then hands began to draw down windows, doors flew open, and the first figures met the platform with a jolt, and started to run.

By the time the carriages themselves had jolted to a stop the platform was already black. When eventually I saw his small round figure far down the platform, childishly looking around, the raincoat over his arm, “A wise man always carries his coat on a good day”, I turned back to the bookstall one side of the gate, and started to spin the paperback stand. He had need of all his own space, without interference from my eyes, as he came up the long platform. He was the last of the passengers to come through the gate. As he did, I went forward and offered to take his coat.

“It’s no weight,” he said as we shook hands.

“You decided not to take the car?”

“Why should I take the car — when you can sit back and the train’ll take you. Then the other fella has to do the driving.”

“Which would you prefer — to go straight to the hospital or have something to eat first?”

“Maybe we might be as well to have something to eat,” there was suddenly unease and apprehension in the eyes as they searched mine.

We had beef sandwiches with a bottle of stout in a bar across the road from the station. We sat at a table just inside the door, out of range of the television high in the corner which was showing horses being led round a parade ring before the start of some race.

“Well,” he cleared his throat. “How is the patient?” in a voice that would have been equally suited to asking me if I thought the Great Wall of China was likely to be around for long more.

“She’s not getting any better. She’s not well.”

“Well, when do you think there might be a change for the better?”

“I don’t know if there’ll be a change for the better.”

He took a sip of the stout, but this time he hurried his words, the voice shaking, “You mean that the writing could be more or less on the wall?”

“I’m afraid that’s what it more or less is.”

We sat in silence, drank and ate in silence. On the small screen a jockey in blue and yellow silks, a whip tucked under his arm, crossed to the centre of the ring and smartly touched his cap to a man in a top-hat, binoculars on his chest.

“Jim must be head beetler at the mill today,” I changed. As a boy Jim had come to work for him at the saw mill. He still looked on him as a boy, though only careful scrutiny could tell which of them was the older man now. They’d grown to look like one another, to take on the same grey, ageless look, into which neither happiness nor unhappiness entered — just a calm and even going about their narrow and strong lives.

“You should have heard him,” he brightened and began to chuckle, easy again back in the familiar corridor. “You’d think the sky was about to fall because he had to be on his own for the one day. And all that has to be sawn is a few scrubs of beeches. And they’re left ready.”

“Is there any sign of Cyril coming up?” I asked about my aunt’s husband, his brother-in-law.

“He didn’t say. He’s good for nothing anyhow.”

“What’s he up to now?”

“They say he’s foolin’ round with other women. He’s drinking lots.”

“Maybe it’s just as well he doesn’t come up.” I remembered her agitation the one time he did come. Her medical card had been clipped to the foot of the bed and it had her age written on it. Torn between terror of her husband discovering her true age and the doctors checking the card on their rounds, she tried to alter the figures but had only succeeded in drawing attention to the poor attempt. In the end, she had to unclip the card and hide it in the bed during his visit. Probably sometime late at night she had hung it back in its place. I winced as I thought of her lying there waiting to put the card back. It was the only time he’d come to visit her through the long illness.

“What do you think we should bring her out?” my uncle asked.

“Whatever you’d like.”

“I know but you’d be better than me at knowing those sort of things.”

“Bring her brandy then.”

“She was never one for anything but a sip of altar wine or a sherry or two at a wedding, and then only if she had to,” there was alarm in his eyes. The drink was one of the great greasers of the slope we’d slide down anyhow.

“I bring her brandy all the time. It seems she mistrusts the medicines and pills. She drinks brandy to kill the pain.”

“How much will we bring?”

“We’ll bring her a bottle each. That way she’ll be all right for a few days.”

The sun was so brutal after coming out of the dark of the bar that we stood on the pavement a moment blinded, the bottles parcelled in brown paper in our hands, the glass of cars glittering as they passed.

“We’ll get a taxi. There’s no use fooling with the buses at this hour,” I said.

“That makes sense,” he echoed. He’d put himself completely in my hands and shambled by my side towards the taxi rank outside the station, the raincoat over his arm, hand gripping the brandy bottle. Only once did he speak on the way to the hospital, to remark on the stink of the Liffey as we crossed Butt Bridge. “The city would sometimes make you want to throw up,” he said.

There was a long corridor from the lift down to the ward but we were in her eyes immediately we got out of the lift. She must have watched that small space outside the lift with the excitement of a hunter ever since the train had got in. I saw her lean towards her locker as we came up the corridor, frantically checking her hair and features in a small mirror. It would have been easier to walk down that corridor if we hadn’t to pretend that we didn’t know she’d seen us yet, imprisoned and awkward in the enforced deceit, as sometimes it is difficult to do some simple thing while being watched, and I was thinking we’d be better walking backwards down the ward when suddenly she waved to us and smiled, her theatricality betraying that she’d been already all too aware of our arrival. Now that we found ourselves in this switched-on light we began to grin and nod with equal grotesqueness.

“We brought you this,” my uncle betrayed his nervousness by putting the bottle down at once, and it alarmed her.

“What is this?”

“It’s not flowers anyhow,” I tried to joke. “It’s far better. And I brought another. It’s brandy.”

“I don’t know what on earth yous want bringing the two bottles for. You’d think it was Sticks McCabe yous were coming in to see.”

“Poor Sticks, be Jesus,” my uncle chuckled automatically, but before she’d time to light on him I said, “Nobody thinks you’re Sticks. I’ve already told how you take a little against the pain.”

“It’s a good job there’s somebody to tell him something.”

“It’s you that’s touchy,” I said.

“Nobody meant a thing,” my uncle said cautiously, and she was mollified.

“I just take it for the pain. I don’t trust those pills they give you. They’re hardly gone down when you can feel them spreading the cold in you as well.”

With that, my uncle began to slowly clear his throat, filling the hospital ward with the rude health of a tree of crows, and pitching his voice on to the firm security of high ground said, “By the way, Cyril sent you his best. He said he’s terrible busy but he’ll be up as soon as he’s ever able.”

“Poor Cyril,” she said dreamily, going inward and protective, all criticism gone. “I know he’s run off his feet. You must tell him that no matter what comes he mustn’t worry. That I’ll be all right,” and I saw my uncle turn his face away to hide any true feelings that might show.