John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘Good God, he’s a teddy boy,’ Sheila said as soon as she caught sight of him at Maggie’s side on the platform.

‘Daddy will have a fit,’ Mona said with dismay.

When they suggested to Maggie that Mark should buy a dark suit or a tweed jacket for the important visit home she was upset and angry. What Mark was wearing was the height of fashion. It had cost a small fortune to assemble. He would not be comfortable in any other clothes nor would other clothes show him off so well; and when they saw the tears fill her eyes they did not press.

That evening they all went out together to a pub. Mark was charming, a good-looking man with three young women, and he drank several pints, remaining in good spirits throughout the evening. Maggie drank beer as well. Both her sisters soon saw past the good looks and glittering jacket to the kind of people he came from, the small-town poor. They felt a little sorry for him, but for Maggie’s sake as well as for their own future lives together, an overwhelming desire that Moran should approve of him gradually blotted out any feelings of their own. They saw that Maggie would marry him and that their lives would intertwine with his for years to come.

On the train he drank bottle after bottle of Smithwicks at the bar. Maggie wasn’t worried because he never got drunk on beer. She had tea.

‘Why won’t you have a beer?’ he asked.

‘I’d feel odd meeting Daddy after drinking beer.’

‘That sounds bananas to me,’ he laughed. ‘But please yourself. Anyhow tea is cheaper.’

Once the train passed Mullingar she found herself getting nervous. After Longford she went and spent a long time in one of the toilets. When she returned to the bar Mark noticed that while she had combed her hair and made up her face she had also taken off her engagement ring. There was a sharp edge to his voice when he asked her where it was.

‘It’s in my handbag.’

‘Why?’

‘We didn’t tell Daddy we are engaged. If I wore the ring it’d look as if we got engaged without his leave.’

‘That’s what happened.’

‘It wouldn’t look right.’

‘What if the old boy can’t stand me?’

‘It won’t matter, love. You know I love you. I know he’ll like you. They all do. You look just great. Trust me. We’ll do it this way.’

‘Whatever you think,’ he said shrugging his shoulders. As their station was the next one they took their luggage out and stood in the corridor. ‘We’re passing the house now.’ She pointed out tall trees in the distance across fields of stone walls. Despite the beer, he had caught some of her excitement and he remained silent, stroking her hair lightly with his hand.

From deep within the shadows Moran watched them get off the train. In this quiet place where dress was conservative, all violence hidden, Mark appeared like a figure out of pantomime. Moran smiled grimly, feeling that he had the advantage, and came firmly out of the shadows. Maggie kissed him nervously and introduced the two men.

‘You’re welcome,’ Moran said without warmth as he shook his hand.

‘Nice to meet you, Michael,’ Mark said. Michael was the form of address Mark and Maggie had agreed on since he would not call him Daddy . It was the kind of ‘with it’ thing they felt went with Mark’s good looks. Moran disliked the familiarity and drove home in silence. Maggie kept up a nervous commentary on how Luke and Michael were doing in London. Moran appeared not to be listening.

‘They are very economical — these cars,’ Mark said after a long silence.

‘They go,’ Moran responded without taking his eyes from the road.

In the house it was easier, Rose making him welcome, putting hot food on the table, inviting him to eat his fill after the long journey. He smiled his sunny handsome smile but, though Rose acknowledged it brightly, he did not feel it worked and he noticed the furtive watchfulness behind Rose’s charm. Everybody was watchful here. It was like moving about in a war area. What had first impressed him about Maggie was her air of separateness and superiority when they had met one Saturday night in the Legion after he had come half-pissed from the Crown. In this house it disappeared as if it had never existed. She who had never appeared to him less than confident was nervous here, cautious, careful in every word and movement.

Suddenly he was angry. ‘You have a fine house here, Michael,’ he said with manly aggression.

Moran looked at him but Mark did not flinch, waiting openly for a fair answer to his salute. Moran pushed his plate and cup away from the edge of the table.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and the two women smiled and were able to move again. ‘The family was brought up here. I suppose everything wasn’t done completely right but we did all we could according to our lights. Nobody starved. We asked nobody for anything.’ Suddenly he changed. ‘I suppose now in the name of God that we had the tea we might as well say the Rosary and get it done early.’

He took the purse with his beads from his pocket and without waiting for any response let them spill out into his palm. He put a newspaper down on the cement and knelt where he had sat upright at the table. He waited for the others to kneel. Maggie handed Mark a newspaper and motioned him to kneel at table or chair. He raised his eyebrows but he too knelt.

‘I’m afraid I have no beads,’ he said looking around to Maggie’s trepidation.

‘You have fingers,’ Moran said, and began, ‘Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips,’ which never had rung out more domineeringly. Maggie recited the Third Mystery. There was a long pause when she finished. Not until she called sharply Mark did he realize they were waiting for him to recite the Fourth Mystery. He stumbled over the first lines, with Maggie suffering tortures in case he would be seen to be so unused to prayer as to have forgotten the words; but by the time he got to the Hail Marys he was able to fall back on the repetitive rhythms and Maggie was able to breathe easily again. He remembered to count on his fingers. As a child he had never counted on anything else. In their house prayers were never said aloud. Each child would say his own private prayers until they were forgotten about in their growing up. His mother went to church most evenings but he always thought that it was more in search of peace after the turmoil of the day than for any need to pray — the way his father went to O’Connell’s bar on the corner when he was flush. Moran himself recited the Fifth Decade but still the prayers continued: Hail Holy Queen, the Litany, Blessed Oliver Plunkett, St Jude, the Grace of a Happy Death, Absent Members of the Family. Mark found that as long as he made a show of mouthing the responses he did not have to pay much attention, that he could imagine who was in the Three Blackbirds at this particular moment and what they were drinking. Murphy’s crowd would still be throwing darts in the public bar, the single bottles of light beside the pint glasses on the counter. It came as a surprise to hear the chairs move as Maggie and Rose got to their feet. Moran dropped his beads slowly back into the black purse, still kneeling, and then lifted himself off his knees.

‘They say the family that prays together stays together,’ Moran said. ‘I think that families can stay together even though they’re scattered, if there’s a will to do so. The will is the important thing.’

Then Moran began to question Mark with heavy authority: what subjects had interested him at school, what did he do before he went to England, what was he doing now in England.

‘The buildings is the readiest money once you get to England,’ Mark said.

‘But not as you get older,’ Moran said.