John McGahern - Amongst Women

The girls looked at him with wide-eyed hurt. They felt that he had let them down in front of others.

‘They’ll think that you are running down your own children.’ Rose articulated what they felt.

‘If I was to praise the girls in the post office, being Irish they would have to cut them down to size,’ Moran argued. ‘Since I didn’t give them any praise, Annie and Lizzie had to do the praising instead. That way they think twice as much of the girls than if I had praised them myself.’ He was very pleased with his own astuteness.

‘It would have been better if he had praised us no matter what anyone said,’ Sheila said when the girls were alone with Rose, disappointed that he had failed to support them in public no matter what his intentions were.

‘Well, that’s the way Daddy is,’ Rose argued. ‘He probably thought that’s what would please you most. He’s so proud of you all. He thought that he might do you harm if he allowed it to show.’

The solid offer of a place in the Department of Lands came for Mona and a similar job in the Department of Finance for Sheila. The offers came among a number of other lesser positions that the girls had applied for.

‘To those that have shall be given too much. To those that have nothing shall be given a kick in the arse,’ Moran responded to the luxury of the choices. He assumed both girls would take the civil service jobs. Then a scholarship to university came in for Sheila. Suddenly the whole world was wide open to her.

‘I’m saying nothing. I want to stand in nobody’s way. She has to make up her own mind. Tonight we’ll all have to pray for her guidance,’ Moran said.

She played with the choices during the remaining days allowed her, knowing in her heart that she would be forced to take the safe path into the civil service. She went to the convent for advice. Sister Oliver pressed her to grasp her chance and go to university. Sheila argued the hesitations and objections she already felt surrounded by, which were, essentially, Moran’s lack of support but the nun pressed her to think about it.

‘I was talking to Sister Oliver. She wants me to forget about the civil service and to go to university,’ she said as soon as she got home.

‘Go to university?’ Moran repeated.

‘I won the scholarships,’ she asserted spiritedly.

‘Would the scholarships pay for everything?’

‘They’d pay for most of it.’

‘Where would the rest come from?’

‘I could work during the holidays.’ She felt under great pressure.

‘What would you study at university?’

‘I’d like to do medicine.’

‘How long would that take?’

‘The most of seven years.’

‘Physician heal thyself,’ he muttered in a half-overheard aside and went out.

Sheila could not have desired a worse profession. It was the priest and doctor and not the guerrilla fighters who had emerged as the bigwigs in the country Moran had fought for. For his own daughter to lay claim to such a position was an intolerable affront. At least the priest had to pay for his position with celibacy and prayer. The doctor took the full brunt of Moran’s resentment.

Sheila withdrew into angry silence. There were moments when she thought of looking for outside help but there was really no one she could turn to. Maggie had barely enough to live on. She considered writing to Luke in London — she had even taken notepaper out — but realized that it would be directly confronting Moran. She could not bring herself to do it.

Throughout, Moran did not attempt to influence Sheila directly but his withdrawal of support was total.

After two days Sheila announced truculently, ‘I’m not going to the university. I’ll take the civil service.’

‘I didn’t want to stand in your way, that’s why I said nothing but I can’t help thinking it is closer to your measure.’

‘How?’ Her anger brought out his own aggression.

‘How, what? How, pig, is it?’ he demanded.

‘What do you mean, Daddy? I didn’t understand what you said, that’s all,’ she was quick to change but she refused to withdraw.

‘You’d understand quick enough if you wanted to. You know the old saying there’s none more deaf than those who do not want to hear.’

‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t understand, Daddy.’

‘Going for medicine is a fairly tall order, isn’t it? Even with scholarships it takes money. I consider all my family equal. I don’t like to see a single one trying to outdistance another.’

‘I didn’t say anything like that. I just said what I’d like to do,’ she said brokenly, with bitterness.

‘That’s right. Blame me because the world isn’t perfect,’ Moran complained equally bitterly. ‘Blame, blame. No matter what you do. Blame is all you get in this family.’

Mona stayed out of the turmoil. She was on her certain way into the civil service from the beginning. Full of hidden violence, she was unnaturally acquiescent, fearful that her own unyieldingness would be exposed and its consequences violent.

Once Sheila was securely set towards the civil service as well, as if out of weakness or guilt Moran began courting her with vague, tentative offers; if she were desperate to go to university they could still look into ways of how it could be managed and they would try to manage it somehow no matter how hard it was. She refused. She knew the offers would disappear again the very moment she tried to take them up.

The week before they were going to Dublin he went with the two girls and Rose to Boles in the town.

‘You must get what you want. You have to be able to hold your heads as high as anybody else in Dublin. Get the good stuff. The Morans are too poor to afford cheap shoes. There will be money after us when we are gone.’ Rose did not take him at his word. She spent carefully. ‘You didn’t spend half enough when you got the chance,’ he said when he saw the bill.

He was plainly suffering because he had denied Sheila her chance of university but he could not have acted in any other way, perhaps through race fear of the poorhouse or plain temperament.

‘Don’t worry, Daddy,’ Mona said. ‘You did everything you could for us. You did far too much.’ Sheila nodded in vigorous agreement.

That evening, after Sheila and Mona had left for Dublin, Michael said resentfully, ‘They’re all gone now.’ After Luke and then Maggie had left for London there were still enough people to dull the heartache and emptiness but now that all the girls had gone it was as if the whole house had been cleaned. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘That’s life, I’m afraid, Michael,’ Rose said.

‘How will they fare without us?’ his face was soft with tears.

‘How will we fare without them?’ Rose said. ‘They’ll manage, please God. We all have to manage somehow.’

‘They shouldn’t all be gone.’

Moran looked from his son’s face to his wife’s but his own remained expressionless. When he got up from his chair he was already spilling the beads from their black purse into his palm. ‘We’d be better if we’d say our prayers.’

The newspapers were put down, the chairs dragged into place but there was so much space on the floor that the three kneeling figures, Moran erect at the table, Rose and Michael bent at the chairs, looked scattered and far apart. There was an uneasy pause, as if waiting for Mona, at the beginning of the Third Mystery. Moran hurried into the Fourth. Rose too was hesitant as she started the Fifth Mystery. A wind was swirling round the house, sometimes gusting in the chimney, and there was an increasing sense of fear as the trees stirred in the storm outside when the prayers ended. For the first time the house seemed a frail defence against all that beat around it.