John McGahern - Amongst Women

Rose kept touching Maggie as they waited, sometimes kneading her shoulder and arm. ‘Look at the fine girl we have. You need have no fear facing the world,’ as if she were already clearly seeing her happiness and her children in the fullness of the years.

As the diesel train came in and people were already picking up suitcases from the platform Moran turned and kissed her as if it were a last good night to all the nights she had come to him.

‘Remember, the house you left will always be your house. While Rose and I are here you’ll have one home that you can always come back to.’

‘We’ll be looking out for you,’ Rose said as they kissed.

Maggie wept. As the train pulled out of the station she searched back for Moran’s face among the crowd and found it and waved.

‘Do you think that gentleman will meet her?’

‘Of course he’ll meet her. He’s not going to let her wander round London on her own. He’s her brother.’

‘I wish I could be as certain but I asked the hospital to meet her as well just in case. If for no other reason, he’ll probably meet her just to get back at me.’

Even on very wet days Moran seldom hung about the house. He had converted one of the outhouses into a sort of workshop where he tinkered with a collection of small engines, antique lighting plants and water pumps that he had bought for next to nothing at country auctions over the years. He had neither the patience nor method to understand properly how they worked and he would not bow to any instruction other than his own perusal of certain manuals and textbooks. Quite often though, through various hit-and-miss applications, he would get one of the engines running. Then he would be very happy, his natural energy spreading that happiness out to everything around him. Rose shared those sort of days with him even more extravagantly than if the days had been her own. There were many other days when nothing would work for him and every space on the long blackened workbench would be covered with a confusion of parts. Those days Rose dreaded and fretted through and it was a kind of peace to turn to the two girls and the boy. She had won them over completely. They would chat away to her about their day until they got down to the schoolwork. Both girls were exceptionally good at school and fond of study. In their earlier years schoolwork had been a haven. They felt safe and protected when they studied.

Michael too was good at school but only did the minimum of study. After less than a half-hour of sitting alone he would grow restless, scatter his books untidily about the table and disappear outside. ‘Are you finished so soon?’ Rose would call teasingly but he would have gone with a slam of the door. ‘If he’s finished you’d think he’d have the manners not to leave the table in such a mess,’ the girls would grumble; but they or Rose would always put his books away. Though tall and strong for his age he had no liking for hard physical work and he was slow to give Moran any help on the land. He had several pets: a grey cat Maria, Shep the sheepdog who went everywhere with him over the fields, several birds including a lame pigeon that he loved to tease Maria with; and one spring he reared a wild duck from the egg of an abandoned nest and was upset for weeks after the October day it finally flew away. Rose started a small flower garden in front of the house soon after coming and there he could often be found, at first helping Rose, then taking over and extending the garden across the footpath until all the green inside the thorn hedge was alive with colour: little beds of forget-me-nots and sweet william, rows of wallflowers that gave out their fragrance in the evenings, formal lilies and roses. His way with birds and animals seemed to go out to all flowers and plants, too. This both amused and irritated Moran.

‘I suppose one of these days you’ll be getting yourself a skirt.’

‘Trousers are far handier,’ he was able to smile it aside.

‘If you grew something like carrots it’d make some sense. It’ll be a long time before you’d eat any of those flowers.’

‘They’re fun to look at.’

‘Looking won’t get you far in this world,’ Moran said.

But hidden in the boy’s answering nod was an equal contempt for Moran’s work, which he regarded as nothing short of voluntary slavery. Brought up from infancy by a screen of girls, and now growing confidently in Rose’s shade, he escaped the fear of Moran.

After Maggie went away Moran took up his old habit of going to the post office. As he no longer wrote to relatives or old war comrades, he explained stiffly, ‘I’m expecting word from my daughter in London. Young people abroad can be quite heedless nowadays.’ Evening after evening passed by without Annie the postmistress finding a letter for him in the grey bag the mail van brought in. Eventually when the letter came in its blue envelope with the pious SAG printed across the seal, the hands so firm holding a gun or tool shook as he took it. Annie was annoyed by the abrupt way he turned away and went out. Outside on the footpath he stood like a stone reading the letter. People leaving the post office spoke to him but he did not hear. When at last he moved away he still combed through the letter as he walked. By the time he got to the house he knew each phrase by heart.

‘She stirred herself at last and wrote,’ he said as he handed Rose the letter.

‘She’d have a lot to get used to at first,’ Rose said absently as she scanned through the letter. Luke had met her at Euston. They had gone to the hospital by the Underground. All the student nurses each had a small room with a desk and bed in the nurses’ home. There were several Irish girls in the class and two girls from near Ballymote. She was just beginning to get used to the wards and the classes. There was a big park with a lake not far from the hospital. Last Sunday Luke had come out. They had gone to the park. Boats were for hire by the hour and they had rowed on the lake. Afterwards they had tea in a wooden café beside the lake. She sent lots of love and a whole line of kisses.

‘You’d think after all that that she’d say what his lordship was actually doing in London.’

‘Still, he met her and went to see her on Sunday.’

‘He’d do that. Yes. He’d do that all right.’

‘Maybe she didn’t get round to asking him much about himself yet,’ Rose said just to break the brooding silence.

‘Maggie may be slow but she’s not that slow,’ he said impatiently. ‘Your man warned her not to say anything about what he is doing. That’s why she wrote nothing.’

Carelessly he let a page of newspaper fall on the cement beside the table and spilled his beads from the small purse into his palm. He prayed absentmindedly, never able to fall into the even, sleepy drone and hum of ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’. He even made a number of slips and repetitions that on a different evening he would have been quick to reprimand in others. Before he had put his beads away he was in search of pen and paper and spent till late writing to Maggie. He had a clean, bare style; when writing he seemed to be able to slip the burden of his personality as he could never do face to face. The three children had gone to bed and Rose was waiting by the fire by the time he was satisfied enough with what he had written to seal the envelope.

With Maggie in London, Sheila and Mona had more light to themselves and were better able to come into their own. Sheila was more than good at school, impulsive and assertive, yet she withdrew into a shell at a hint of opposition. After school Rose loved to draw her out, to tease out of her reckless opinions and to watch her quick mind wheel and tack as she strained to defend what was usually insupportable. Mona was quiet, hardworking and extremely stubborn, anxious to be agreeable; but once she took up a position — or got caught in one — she was obstinately immovable and this had often brought her into conflict with Moran. Rose’s coming to the house had smoothed their lives and allowed them to concentrate everything on school and study, which, above all, they saw as a way out of the house and into a life of their own.