John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘Leave the doors open in case Rose wants to hear,’ he said to the boy. Michael opened both doors to the room. He paused at the bedroom door but the vague shape amid the bedclothes did not speak or stir.

At the Second Glorious Mystery Moran paused. Sometimes if there was an illness in the house the sick person would join in the prayers through the open doors but when the silence was not broken he nodded to Mona and she took up Rose’s Decade. After the Rosary, Mona and Sheila made tea and they all slipped away early.

Moran sat on alone in the room. He was so engrossed in himself that he was startled by the sound of the back door opening just after midnight. Maggie was even more startled to find him alone when she came in and instantly relieved that she hadn’t allowed the boy who had seen her home from the village further than the road gate.

‘You’re very late,’ he said.

‘The concert wasn’t over till after eleven.’

‘Did you say your prayers on the way home?’

‘No, Daddy. I’ll say them as soon as I go upstairs.’

‘Be careful not to wake the crowd that has to go to school in the morning.’

‘I’ll be careful. Good night, Daddy.’ As on every night, she went up to him and kissed him on the lips.

He sat on alone until all unease was lost in a luxury of self- absorption. The fire had died. He felt stiff when he got up from the chair and turned out the light and groped his way through the still open doorway to the bed, shedding his clothes on to the floor. When he got into bed he turned his back energetically to Rose.

She rose even earlier than usual next morning. Usually she enjoyed the tasks of morning but this morning she was grateful above all mornings for the constancy of the small demanding chores: to shake out the fire, scatter the ashes on the grass outside, to feel the stoked fire warm the room. She set the table and began breakfast. When the three appeared for school they were wary of her at first but she was able to summon sufficient energy to disguise her lack of it and they were completely at ease before they left for school. When Moran eventually appeared he did not speak but fussed excessively as he put on socks and boots. She did not help him.

‘I suppose I should be sorry,’ he said at length.

‘It was very hard what you said.’

‘I was upset over that telegram my beloved son sent. It was as if I didn’t even exist.’

‘I know, but what you said was still hard.’

‘Well then, I’m sorry.’

It was all she demanded and immediately she brightened. ‘It’s all right, Michael. I know it’s not easy.’ She looked at him with love. Though they were alone they did not embrace or kiss. That belonged to darkness and the night.

‘Do you know what I think, Rose? We get too cooped up here sometimes. Why don’t we just go away for the day?’

‘Where would we go to?’

‘We can drive anywhere we want to drive to. That’s the great thing about having a car. All we have to do is back it out of the shed and go.’

‘Do you think you can spare the day?’ She was still careful.

‘It’s bad if we can’t take one day off,’ he said laughingly. He was happy now, relieved, pleased with himself, ready to be indulgent.

He backed the Ford out of the shed and faced it to the road. Maggie had risen and was taking breakfast when he came in.

‘Is there anything you want, Daddy?’

‘Not a thing in the wide world, thanks be to God.’ She was relieved to hear the tone. ‘You’ll have the whole place to yourself today. Rose and myself are away for the day.’

‘When do you think you’ll be back, Daddy?’

Rose had left out his brown suit and shirt and tie and socks and he had started to dress.

‘We’ll be back when you see us. We’ll be back before night anyhow,’ he said as he tucked his shirt into his trousers, hoisting them round his hips.

‘I’m holding everybody up,’ Rose fussed self-effacingly. She looked well, even stylish in a discreet way, in her tweed suit and white blouse.

‘Daddy looks wonderful. I hope I’m not too much of a disgrace,’ she laughed nervously, moving her hands and features in one clear plea to please.

‘You look lovely, Rose. You look like a lady,’ Maggie said.

‘I’m bound to be taken for the chauffeur,’ he laughed out, mispronouncing the word with relish but he was not corrected as he hoped.

‘There’d never be a fear of that,’ she said with feeling.

They set off together in the small car, Rose’s girlish smiles and waves only accentuating the picture of the happy couple going on a whole day’s outing alone together. Maggie watched the car turn carefully out into the main road and then she went and closed the gate under the big yew tree.

Moran drove purposefully. The car crossed the shallow racing river in Boyle, passed the grey walls of the roofless monastery, and it kept on the main road leading across the Curlews. Rose hadn’t asked him where they were driving to; she didn’t care anyhow: it was enough to be with him in the day.

‘O’Neill and O’Donnell crossed here with cannon and horses on the way to Kinsale in one night,’ he told her as the car was climbing into the low mountains. ‘They were able to cross because the black frost made the ground hard as rock that night.’

He seemed to relax more after he had spoken, to be less fixedly focused on the empty road.

‘I suppose some of your own nights when you were on the run were not unlike that,’ she ventured into what they had never spoken of.

‘No. They were different,’ he said not unkindly but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about those nights.

‘Would you like to go to Strandhill? When the children were young we went there every year.’

‘I’d love to see the ocean,’ she said. She didn’t care where she went or what she saw as long as he was pleased and she was with him. Now most of her pleasure and all of her pain flowed through him. For her there was always a strange excitement in his presence of something about to happen. Nothing was ever still. She felt inordinately grateful when he behaved normally.

‘That’s the calm sea,’ he pointed out the inlet that ran to Ballysadare as they came along the narrow twisting road into Strandhill. ‘We all used to swim there. It’s more private and safe. The rough sea at the front is dangerous. There was hardly a summer that three or four weren’t drownded.’

‘It was very good of you to take them to the sea. Hardly anybody else about except the schoolteachers ever thought of taking their children to the sea.’

‘I always tried to do the best or what I thought was best. It is not easy to know sometimes. When you think you’re right that is the very time it’ll fly back in your teeth. Luke wouldn’t come to the sea in the finish.’

‘All boys growing up get that way,’ she said.

‘We had to stop selling the turf then,’ he said.

‘What turf?’ she asked.

‘We took a lorry load of turf for our own fire and sold the rest in bags door to door.’ He pointed out the pebbled street in front of Park’s Guest House where they had first stayed and a bungalow they had taken between the church and the golf links. ‘We sold the turf from there. It paid for the entire holiday. There was a great take on it. That whole summer was wet. Everybody wanted a fire because of the rain. We made money on that holiday.’

There were only two other cars at the front and they rolled to a stop alongside the plinth on which the antique cannon stood pointing out to sea like some deep-chested mongrel. They sat for a long time in silence watching the Atlantic crash down on the empty shore.

‘We haven’t come to the sea in three years. I suppose that’s how you get old. You find yourself not doing a whole lot of things you once did without a thought.’