John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘You must think I’m made of money. You must think money grows on bushes. You must think all I have to do is to go out and gather money like a few armfuls of hay for cattle. I had no money at your age. And none of the others in the house ever had the money you want.’

‘Everybody at school has money, more money than I ever have,’ the boy said resentfully.

‘Then their fools of fathers must have more money than sense. I can tell you there’s no money here. I can tell you that once and for all and for good.’

Then Michael went to Rose. Again she gave him small sums. She was very fond of the boy, though by now, except for a coltish awkwardness, he was more man in height and strength than boy. All of them now looked forward to Christmas. Each night brought it one day nearer. The girls would be coming home and all of them would be together again under the same roof. Each dull night sharpened that anticipation.

Rose had already made the plum pudding. It lay wrapped in dampened gauze in the biscuit tin on top of the dresser. A week before Christmas Moran dragged a huge red-berried branch through the front door and dumped it in the middle of the room, filling the centre of the floor.

‘What’s that doing here?’ Rose asked in dismay.

‘Didn’t you tell me to look out for berried holly? You’ll not see much redder than that. I don’t know how it escaped the birds.’

‘I said a few sprigs not a whole tree.’

‘Easier to cut the branch than pluck here and there among the thorns. Can’t you throw out what you don’t want?’

‘Oh Daddy, we just want a few bits for the windows and pictures. But the berries are beautiful. It’s such a pity to destroy a whole tree for a few sprigs.’

‘It’d go to waste on the birds anyway. Better to have too much than too little.’ He went out pleased by the mild censure of the tree of red berries lying in the middle of the floor.

It moved Rose to decorate the house at once in order to be rid of the huge branch, and Michael helped. In an hour bits of berried holly were twisted in all the picture cords and left in rows along windowsills and shelves. ‘Daddy can never do anything by halves,’ Rose laughed as they hauled the branch outside. It still had enough berries to decorate several houses and they both laughed in indulgent amusement.

During these weeks at the prospect of his sisters’ homecoming Michael returned to being a child of the house. He was poised on the blurred height, as eager to come down and be cradled and fussed over as to swagger and tomcat it out into the wild. Maggie crossed over to Dublin the night before Christmas Eve. She spent the day in Dublin and the three girls took the late train next day.

Moran left alone for the station. Michael stayed outside the house in the cold clear night until suddenly the lighted squares of the diesel train rattled across the darkness of the Plains. ‘The train has passed!’ he rushed inside to cry to Rose. In spite of the cold he kept opening the front door. Excited herself, and caught in his excitement, she had not the heart to tell him to keep it closed. ‘They’re here!’ he called to her as soon as the headlights turned into the short avenue, and leaving the door wide open they went to meet the car. By the little wooden gate there were hugs and cries, eager kisses, the calling out of names, Sheila, Maggie, Michael, Mona, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, each name an utterance of pleasure and of joy. They were home, they were home for Christmas. Moran’s family were all, almost all, under the one roof for Christmas. They had come to what they knew best in the world.

‘Look what I brought for Christmas,’ Moran laughed proudly when they were all inside. ‘Three fine women.’ Words rushed against one another from the two who loved to talk, Maggie and Sheila, came to a stop against one another, laughed in impatience at each block, and rushed on. Mona was silent or spoke quietly.

By the time tea was taken everyone was quieter and each of them speaking naturally. All they had to do was observe the happy rituals: help prepare the turkey, remove the curtains from the front windows and light a single candle in each window, kneel to say the Rosary together, dress and get ready to go to midnight Mass. As they knelt on the floor, Moran began, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost we offer up this most holy Rosary for the one member of the family who is absent from the house tonight,’ and the dramatizing of the exception drew uncomfortable attention to the disturbing bonds of their togetherness.

The three girls, Rose and Michael packed into the small car which Moran was driving to midnight Mass. They sat on one another’s knees and joked. ‘I think you’ve put on weight since you went to Dublin.’ ‘Your knees haven’t got softer anyhow since,’ laughing and chattering away the discomfort of the physical constraint. Single candles burned in the windows of all the houses they passed and pinpoints of light glittered as far as the first slopes of the mountain in the sea of darkness.

Once they crossed the bridge the church appeared like an enormous lighted ship in the night. There was something wonderful and moving about leaving the car by the roadside and walking together in the cold and darkness towards the great lighted church. The girls clasped hands in silence and drew closer together as they walked. Once they passed through the church gates several people came over to them to welcome them home and to wish them a happy Christmas, whispering how well they looked as they bowed away with little nods and smiles. The church itself was crowded and humming with excitement. There were many others like the Moran girls who had come home for Christmas. They would all be singled out as they came away from the altar rail after Communion and discussed over hundreds of dinners the next day: who was home and where they were living and what they worked at and how they looked and who they got their looks from and what they wore last night as they came away from the rail. As good-looking girls in their first flowering, the three Morans were among the stars of the Communion rail that Christmas night.

‘I’ll leave you to this cackle,’ Moran said indulgently as soon as he finished his cup of tea after they got back to the house. ‘But my advice is to go to bed.’

‘I suppose we should all go to bed,’ Sheila said vigorously as soon as Moran had left but no sooner had she said the words than she launched into, ‘And did you see Mary Fahey?’ which led on to more people and clothes and positions and looks, until Rose said with her apologetic little laugh, ‘We could go on like this the whole night and Daddy will wonder what on earth we were talking about all this time.’

When she was gone, the heart of the talk was broken; and then to Sheila’s ‘I suppose we should go to bed’, they went.

Because of midnight Mass the whole house was able to sleep late. Once they rose the day was set. There would be no surprises, pleasant or unpleasant. No visits would be made or received this day — it was considered to be improper to leave one’s own house on Christmas Day — and the day would climb to the glory of the feast of turkey and stuffing and then slip back again to night in card playing.

‘I suppose there’s not much use inquiring about that brother of yours,’ Moran asked awkwardly. ‘Anybody normal would be with his own family at Christmas.’ It was as if he wanted to get all unpleasantness out of the way early in deference to the day and feast.

‘I didn’t see him very much. He lives the other side of London. It takes over an hour to get there on the tube,’ Maggie said carefully.

‘What’s he doing with himself for Christmas?’

‘He said he was going down to Kent. He has friends there.’