John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘Don’t you like it?’ She smiled a little, taken aback by the spareness of the response.

‘It cost far too much and is far too grand for an old fellow like me.’ The response was positively exuberant.

Just as Rose was preparing to leave, the wren-boys arrived on the Arigna coal lorry. There must have been twenty men on the back of the lorry in masks and carnival costumes. With the money they gathered from different houses, they bought ham, loaves and butter, lemonade, whiskey and half-barrels of porter to hold a big dance in Kirkwood’s barn that night. Everyone around was invited.

As soon as they came into the house a melodeon started to play and two fiddles took up in perfect tune; then bagpipes played alone. Young men danced Rose Brady and the girls round the kitchen. There were whoops and cheers, mock kissing attempts, challenges to put names on the masked faces and then a song.

‘The two of you will have to come to the Major’s tonight,’ the man who gathered the money said.

‘Maybe we will,’ Moran responded. ‘Maybe we will.’

Moran gave them a pound, Rose took a red ten-shilling note from her handbag and they left in the same whirl as they had entered, dancing and singing all the way out to the lorry. An eerie silence descended over the house as the lorry left for the next house.

‘Are we going to the dance?’ Rose asked Moran as she left.

‘What would be seen there but the same old crowd making fools of themselves?’

‘It’s Christmas.’

‘Do you want to go?’

‘I’d like to very much.’

He went reluctantly. There was an air of great jollity and freedom, even of outright licence, at the wren-boys’ dance in Kirkwood’s barn. Moran didn’t feel easy. The air of friendliness was the kind that he disliked most. The wren-boys who had gone from house to house on the lorry all day were now scrubbed and combed, playing away cheerfully on raised planks. Even though there was a sharp frost outside, couples could be seen stealing away from the dance and returning a half-hour or so later, always a little crestfallen until they had danced again, danced their way back into good cheer. Moran hardly spoke to anybody and reacted roughly to any jostling as he danced with Rose on the warped floor. Rose was anxious, feeling that he had lived in the stone house with too much responsibility for too long. He had not been able to go out and be at ease with people. What she did not know was that Moran, with his good looks and military fame, had once been king of these barn dances and now that he had neither youth nor fame would not take a lesser place. He would not take part at all.

Rose had come to the dance to claim their place as a couple among the people in this loose, Christmas carnival. She was determined to remain. She smiled and chatted with everybody around her. She took tea. She danced with neighbours and men she had gone to school with. She forced Moran to dance and by the night’s end she was worn out by the single effort. He had given her no help throughout the night but it did not lessen her love.

In the car, leaning her head on his consenting but exasperated shoulder, she said, ‘We don’t have to be like the rest of the people round here. We don’t have to go out together for years. There’s nothing in the way of our getting married, and I love you, Michael,’

‘When do you want to get married?’

‘This year. Before the summer. If there was something in our way it would be different.’

‘There’s the children to consider.’

‘I’d not be in the way of the children. I could only be of help.’

‘When do you want to be married then?’

‘We have nothing to stop us before Lent.’

‘It’d be too rushed,’ he said. ‘It’ll have to be after Lent.’

‘The week after Easter then.’ She set the time and was too happy to notice that he was more like a man listening to a door close than one going towards his joy.

‘We’ll have the wedding breakfast in the Royal. There won’t be need to invite many,’ she proposed carefully some days later.

‘I don’t want anything in an hotel.’

‘We have to have some place for a reception,’ she argued.

‘Haven’t we two houses of our own?’

‘I don’t think they’d like that at home. As soon as I mentioned an Easter wedding they brought up the Royal.’

‘The Bradys don’t have that much money to scatter at the Royal Hotel.’

‘They don’t mind that. It’s just one day.’

‘There’ll be no hotels. We are too old and poor for that.’

‘It’ll be thought strange. Everybody does it.’

‘Because everybody goes and jumps in the river is no reason why we have to go and jump in the same river.’

‘I know that what you say makes sense, love,’ she placed her hand on his arm. ‘They’ll not like it at home. They’ll not understand. Can’t we go to the Royal for them?’

‘Let them start to understand,’ he said as he took her hand in a playful threat. ‘We can always have ham and tea and whiskey for anybody that wants it in our house. That way we’ll have less travelling to do afterwards.’

As a play it was close to perfect. The honour of the reception always fell to the family of the bride. It would not do for it to take place in Moran’s house and Moran would not go to a hotel. The Bradys would have to agree to hold it in their house or not at all.

Eventually Rose persuaded them to hold the reception in the house. They did not like it, argued against it — argued against the whole match — but she held firm. There would be fewer people to cope with that way, and she wasn’t young any longer.

The night before the wedding the girls hardly slept at all and they did not chatter to one another as they usually did until they found sleep. In the morning their father would be married. Another woman would come back with him into the house. It did not matter that it was the Rose they had grown to like. The life they had come to know so well for so long as it slipped by changelessly would be irrevocably altered: it was like a death or a wounding and brought all the wonder and fear and awe of change. Each of their own lives would have to take up another uncertain beginning.

Moran himself slept fitfully beside their brother. Now and again he would reach a hand over to the boy but he slept deeply through the night. It would be his last night of sleep in the room. The small boxroom with a single bed was already prepared. Tomorrow night Rose would lie in the boy’s place. When he did wake, Moran reached his hand across to the coarse shirt over the shoulder and gently began to knead the muscles.

‘It’s the last time we’ll wake in the morning together.’

‘The last time,’ the boy repeated uncertainly.

‘You know what day it is?’

‘Your wedding day.’

‘It’s the end of one life. The beginning of a different life. I believe it’s in the best interest of all the family. We can only pray and hope it’ll turn out for the best.’

The boy was always more uncomfortable with these essays in tenderness than any sudden harshness. He sat up immediately in the bed to listen.

‘They’re up,’ he announced. ‘They’re all up. Do you want me to draw the curtain, Daddy?’

‘No. Not yet,’ Moran said but the boy had already drawn free from the kneading hand and was struggling into his clothes. He closed the door softly behind him and was gone without another word. Moran lay on in bed till very late. One of the girls had to come to the door to call him.

‘Your clothes is aired and ready, Daddy. It’s time to get up.’

He came in in his old trousers and nightshirt. They were already dressed for the wedding, wearing little bits of borrowed fineries they were afraid he would notice. The boy was wearing his blue suit, shining black shoes, white shirt and blue tie and his fair hair was oiled. The kettle was boiling and Maggie poured the water into the basin in front of the shaving mirror. He failed to notice the borrowed things that the girls wore, looking around him instead in dumb bafflement: it was a wedding day, a shining moment in his life, and, except for the dressed children, it could be any ordinary day. His clothes were draped on the back of a chair in front of the fire. The clothes horse was drawn up. The steaming water was waiting in the basin before the mirror. He felt a low cry of frustration against the inadequacy of life break silently within, and ripple out. ‘What time is it?’ he demanded fiercely.