John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘That’s just like a man to ask now,’ Nell said. ‘You have nothing to worry about.’

They picked dilsk from the rocks below the roofless church and examined several clear pools between the rocks. There was much minuscule life in the pools but no stranded fish.

‘I don’t understand what you mean when you say it was boring here. Wasn’t it a change?’

‘God,’ he said. ‘You should have been here. He brought a lorry load of turf here to pay for the rent. We had to sell it from door to door. There was no danger of him going door to door selling.’

‘That wouldn’t be a big deal when you’re little.’

‘It was horrible going round the houses,’ he betrayed the same sense of separateness the father had instilled in the others, which was plainly less than useful when it came to selling turf. ‘You’d feel like crawling into a hole.’

To get back to the car they had to face into the wind again. They were hungry. All the places along the seafront were closed for the winter and so they drove to Sligo. In Castle Street they found a plain café and had hamburgers and bread and chips with a pot of scalding tea. Then, tired, they wandered around the town. They would have liked to have gone to the Gaiety to see a western with Alan Ladd but they hadn’t time enough. He was very quiet as they drove back and she left him a few miles from the house. Bravely he waved to her as she drove away.

‘How was school?’ Rose called as soon as he came in.

‘Just the same as ever,’ he answered. He had a habit of switching into his own thoughts while giving the appearance of listening but this evening he followed every syllable of Rose’s good-humoured account of her day.

‘Now eat your dinner, Michael.’

He gathered that they hadn’t heard he had missed school. ‘Thanks, Rose.’

After a while Moran came in but he didn’t want to talk. A few times he threw a glance in his son’s direction but the boy stayed hidden in a book.

‘I want you to give a hand with some sheep,’ he said as he rose to go out.

‘When would suit you, Daddy?’

‘Now.’

Moran and the dog had already run the sheep into the yard where they were huddled together, wide-eyed with fear. When Moran and Michael came into the yard they set off in a wild panic until they huddled at bay in another corner.

‘They’re so stupid,’ Michael laughed like a child at their panic.

‘They’re like some people,’ Moran responded tersely.

Michael measured the drench into a small bottle. Moran forced it down the sheeps’ throats while Michael held them. Then they turned the sheep on their backs and pared and bathed the small hooves. When they were finished they marked each one with a dab of blue paint before letting it free. There were more than sixty sheep to do and it was slow and monotonous. Michael grew bored and started to make mistakes. Moran almost hit him when he allowed a startled sheep to break loose, knocking Moran aside; and then he dropped the can of drench.

‘God, O God, O God. If I could only do this on my own. You can’t pay attention for a minute, can’t watch for a minute what you are doing,’ Moran seized the can violently and poured the measure himself.

‘I didn’t ask to do this,’ the boy cried with equal violence.

‘Of course you didn’t ask to do any of this. All you’d ever ask to do is sit on your arse and entertain women.’

‘I was doing the best I could. I couldn’t help that the can slipped,’ Michael countered.

‘Are we going to go on or are you going to whinge all day?’ Moran asked and resentfully they went back to working together again. When it was done Moran watched the sheep quietly stream out of the yard. They wouldn’t have to be touched for another two months. He turned in gratitude to thank the boy. He had forgotten how good two people could be working together. A man working alone was nothing. If the boy wanted to come in with him the two of them could do anything. They could run this place like clockwork. They could in time even take over other farms, a dream he had once had about his eldest son: together they could take over everything.

Michael had gone into the house without asking Moran’s leave. Bitterly he closed the field gate on the sheep. Then he checked that the cattle were tended for the night. When he came in he found Michael changed and standing confidently in front of the fire.

‘You were fairly quick away,’ Moran said. ‘I turned round to say something to you as I was letting out the sheep and there was no longer sight or light.’

‘I thought we were finished.’

‘You might have asked.’

‘I didn’t think there was any need. I thought we were finished.’

‘It’d be natural manners but I don’t imagine there’d be any use expecting anything like manners round this place,’ Moran said.

Outside the window the fields were darkening rapidly. Rose bustled reproachfully round Michael at the fire and he moved away to the table. Demonstratively he had books and writing materials out on the table.

‘I’ve warm socks for you here, Daddy. There’s a change of underwear in the hot press. You’ll feel better once you get out of the old duds.’

Moran took off his wellingtons and sat in the big car chair in his stockinged feet. He stirred when she spoke but continued staring vacantly out into the empty space of the room and didn’t answer. ‘Who cares anyhow?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Who cares? Who cares anyhow?’

Though they had just spent the day together, Michael and Nell arranged to meet again that night. She would wait for him in the car at the Rockingham gates. Michael could not leave the house until the Rosary was said. He chaffed while he waited but there was nothing he could do. To leave the house before prayers were said would invite certain confrontation. This night Rose had to remind Moran that the prayers had not yet been said. By the time he put the newspaper down on the cement and dropped to his knees at the table Nell was already sitting in her car outside the big gateway. Michael suffered keenly the incongruity of his position — a man with a woman by the sea in the early day and now a boy on his knees on the floor. When it came to his turn to recite the Third Decade he gave it out stridently. The tone drew a sharp glance from Moran but he did not intercept the prayers. He waited until he had risen from his knees to say, ‘That was a peculiar way you had of giving out your Decade.’ Violence between the man and the youth was just a flint-spark away. ‘To my poor ears it showed a certain lack of respect.’

‘I meant no disrespect,’ Michael backed away.

‘I’m very glad to hear it. People who get too hot under the collar generally get a cooling.’

Michael didn’t answer. He didn’t even risk saying that he was going out. He slipped outside, taking his coat on the way and pulling it on in the darkness while he ran to the gates. Though he was over an hour late Nell was still waiting in the car when he reached the gates.

The next morning they drove again to Sligo. This time they saw the western at the early matinée in the Gaiety. During the following weeks they drove to every place around they ever wanted to see, even as far as Galway. They drove to Mullingar and Longford. In Ballymote they stood together in front of every shop window in the town. On a clear Thursday they crossed the border and walked hand in hand between the long rows of stalls in Enniskillen. Beside the gates of the mart she bought him a cheap wristwatch from an Indian stall. He had never owned a watch of his own before. Though it was winter they drove many times to the ocean, to Rosses Point and Mul- laghmore and Bundoran as well as to the wild strand at Strandhill. He arrived back each time with his books to Rose and Moran just as it was starting to get dark.