John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘I don’t know why he had to rout us out. We have wasted all this time getting here. We’d study better at home,’ Sheila complained crossing the fields.

‘That’s him,’ Mona answered. ‘He’s never content with things the way they are.’

They passed the delicate white blossoms of wild cherry, Sheila striding along in angry resentment, Mona following in her shadow. The light of water showed through the tree trunks as they drew close to the narrow wood along the lake but once on the fringe of the trees they lost all resentment at the sight of the thick floor of bluebells beneath the trees. To advance further into the wood was to trample on the colour blue.

‘There must be thousands.’

‘There’s millions!’

Their feet left clear tracks through the floor of bluebells as if on dark snow, the soft stems crushing to pulp under their feet. At the well they left their books and went down to the shore. The water was still. Summer had not yet replaced the wheaten reeds of winter with green along the edges. Out in the lake the gulls wheeled and scolded above their young on the pile of reeds ringed with rocks that formed Seagull Island. There was no boat any longer in Nutley’s boathouse. Some boards had been torn from the side and its black paint of tar had turned pale.

‘I don’t like this place,’ Sheila said.

‘Do you remember when we used to go with Daddy in the boat on Saturdays?’

‘How could I forget!’ Sheila said derisively.

Before getting down to their books they searched out a hollow straw and leaned flat across the spring to drink the water which was famed for its coldness. It was as if by drinking from the cold spring they were hoping to appease some spirit of the place so that it wouldn’t turn unfriendly to their studies; but they could not settle as they tried to read and make notes. A fly landed on a nose. A pure white butterfly tossed about in the light on the edge of the lake. Bees were moving about on the bluebells. A wren or robin scrambled about in a clump of thorns and seemed to be scolding.

‘This is a joke,’ Sheila closed her book. ‘I can’t take in a word here. I’m going home. What can he say? It’s too close to the exam to waste time.’

‘He can’t say that we didn’t make an attempt.’ Mona too was glad to leave.

‘We should have known better,’ came the exasperated response.

Even Sheila grew a little afraid as they drew close to the house. Coming home so early might seem to be confronting Moran.

‘You are almost back before you left.’ He met them at the gate and was smiling. ‘There’s nothing like the lake and the open air for powdering through the lessons.’

‘We got nothing done, Daddy.’ Sheila hung her head despondently low.

‘I’m surprised. I thought when I saw the pair of you coming that you had just raced through everything,’ Moran laughed. There was no reason to be afraid; on the contrary, he was delighted.

‘There were too many things to look at, Daddy,’ Mona said apologetically.

‘Ye are making excuses now,’ he teased. ‘You’re just no good and weren’t able to make yourselves get down to it.’

After they had gone in and resumed their grind in the usual places, Rose came out to him and said gently, ‘You were terrible, Daddy, to make them go down to the lake.’

‘What’s so terrible about it?’ he laughed, still in good humour. ‘It’s fresh air, isn’t it? They need to be rooted out of themselves from time to time. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. They’ll appreciate the inside of the house far better now.’

This small disturbance did not deflect them for long. They read and reread, often looking quite abstracted, memorizing passages silently, their eyes far off; and when ideas eluded or baffled them they would turn to one another for help, each sister seeming to draw strength and comfort from the other’s closeness.

Moran felt so outside their circle of concentration that he had to resort to tiptoeing into the room in an exaggerated parody of someone trying to enter unheard but his only audience was the boy, and that not often, and laughter only lifted the girls’ heads from their books for a forgotten moment.

Each of these clear days of scattered apple and white pear tree blossom moved inexorably towards the first day when they set out without books and came home in the evening showing the pink or blue papers they had tested themselves against in the examination hall.

‘How do you think you did?’ Moran was waiting anxiously to ask each evening.

‘We don’t know, Daddy. The nun thinks we didn’t do too bad.’

‘Never mind. We’ll always have enough to eat here anyhow,’ he said, feeling vulnerable in the face of the power that rested in the hands of the outside.

Then, suddenly, the exams were over. They could put their books away. But, instead of the freedom and ease they had longed for, all they felt was emptiness where once all was tension and work. They had to pass idle days of waiting that stretched ahead to an eternity of weeks in August.

‘You don’t have to worry about anything,’ Moran said constantly. ‘You don’t have to worry about a single thing.’

In early July the waiting was broken by the excitement of Maggie coming home for the first time since she had left for London. She was coming home for three whole weeks and by the time she left for London again the exam results would be nearly due.

Rose had already started to paint the main room of the house during the first exam. The freed girls helped her finish it, scrub tables and chairs. The old furniture was left outside in the sun to air. They scrubbed white the boards of the floor and the old brown flagstones of the hallway took on a damp glow. Michael’s front garden was beautiful with stock, beds of sweet william and marigolds that took greedily the sun from the other flowers — pansies, roses and lilies. Moran washed and polished the car, even cleared rusted machinery from around the house. He was more excited than anyone else and continually cracked jokes.

On the arrival day he considered going to meet Maggie in Carrick but he was afraid that he might miss her and decided to go to Boyle. He left alone before the train reached Carrick. Against Rose’s chidings he went in his old working clothes as if, perversely, to deny that the day was special in any way. ‘She’ll have to take me as she finds me. She’s back in the country now.’ After he left everyone was glued to the clock.

‘The train is coming into Carrick!’

The waiting silence was broken by, ‘I’d say the train is leaving Carrick now,’ and they all went to the fields behind the house to catch a glimpse of the train as it passed. They heard the diesel engine, the quick rattle of the wheels on rails and then the caterpillar of carriages that rose above the stone walls, the small windows flashing in the sun as they were quickly drawn across their view and gone. Then they all moved to the front of the house to watch the road and wait.

They were so intent on watching every car that they failed to pick up Moran’s until it was turning slowly in the gate under the yew tree. Moran looked stern and self-conscious as he drove up the short avenue. Maggie burst into tears at the sight of the house and the small familiar crowd waiting for her outside the wooden gate of the garden. Everyone embraced blindly and kissed one by one.

‘You are such a handsome one now,’ Rose looked her up and down with pleasure.

‘What do you think of an old fellow like myself turning up to meet such a grand lassie?’

Rose laughed and there was a general scramble to carry the baggage into the house.

In the house Maggie unpacked the presents she brought: a brilliant red woollen scarf for Rose, a brown V-necked pullover for Moran; Sheila and Mona were handed silken headscarves and Michael a saffron tie to go with his hair. She also brought him seeds with pictures of the flowers on the packets.