John McGahern - Amongst Women

‘I don’t think you’re a bit odd. And I’m going to enjoy this next pint. You can’t enjoy a drink with someone watching you like that.’

That Luke had refused again to go to Great Meadow went through the house in days but it was not allowed to reach Moran. Together the three girls found it unacceptable. They had assumed that time and distance would smooth all but the most angular of differences and they now feared that too much time had already passed. Beneath all differences was the belief that the whole house was essentially one. Together they were one world and could take on the world. Deprived of this sense they were nothing, scattered, individual things. They would put up with anything in order to have this sense of belonging. They would never let it go. No one could be allowed to walk out easily.

‘Are you sure you put it to him right?’ Sheila demanded. ‘He seemed sensible enough at your wedding.’

‘Mark was with me. Ask him if you want to. Oh, Luke can be very charming — excuse me — when he’s not asked to do what he doesn’t want.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Sheila responded. In the frustration the sarcasm showed clearly.

‘There’s no need to tell Daddy. He’d just get upset,’ Rose said when she was told.

As a last resort the girls decided to send Michael to speak to Luke. They arranged to meet. Luke offered lunch and picked an Italian place near to where Michael worked. The luxury of the restaurant was a treat for Michael and he was excited and laughing. He shared his sisters’ sense of family: to have lunch with his brother in such a place was important.

Luke asked about his work, his exams, if there was any help he wanted. All was well, Michael answered; nothing could be done until he qualified. They enjoyed the food, the luxury, the wine, the sense of privilege where all gathered in a fleeting act of restoration; and they had nothing to deal or sell.

‘Was it all right?’ Luke asked at the end of the meal.

‘You could get used to it,’ Michael laughed. ‘It would be very easy. I have to state though that I’m here on a mission.’

‘What mission?’

Michael raised his hand in mock defence. ‘The sisters sent me. I’m supposed to ask you to go home to Great Meadow.’

‘For what?’

‘Because Daddy wants to see you.’

‘Well, I don’t want to see Daddy.’

‘I’ve said my bit. I’m not saying another word.’

‘The man is mad. Or that’s how I remember him.’

Michael found this so funny that his sudden shout of laughter attracted the attention of nearby tables.

‘I’m serious,’ Luke said. ‘There are lunatics, right? There are fathers who must have lunatic sons. There must be sons who have lunatic fathers. Either I’m crazy or he is.’

Michael found this so funny that he drew several looks.

‘Take it easy,’ Luke warned. ‘You continue to go home. You know more about it now than I do.’

‘Daddy’s all right now. He’s old. He can’t do feck-all any more. You don’t have to heed him. Only for Rose I don’t know how he’d manage.’

‘I see no reason to go back there. I found it hard enough to get out of the damned place.’

‘Then don’t go. I’ll just tell them you won’t.’

‘They’ll love that.’

‘So what?’ Michael asked.

‘So what!’ Luke repeated and called for the bill and paid.

Outside on the pavement, the busy street teaming around them, Michael said, ‘I suppose I’m sort of fond of the old bastard in spite of everything.’

‘I’m not. That’s the trouble.’

‘He can be all right,’ Michael said as they separated. In the frail way that people assemble themselves he, like the girls, looked to Great Meadow for recognition, for a mark of his continuing existence.

When Michael brought word from the meeting Maggie was suspicious that it would be the same message she and Mark had received.

‘He was nice about it. He bought me a slap-up lunch but he doesn’t want to go home.’

‘I suppose he just turned you round to his way of thinking.’

‘No. I told him I was fond of Daddy in spite of everything. He thinks Daddy’s a lunatic. He put it so cool and precise, it nearly killed me.’ Freed from the constraint of the restaurant, he roared with laughter.

‘I don’t know which of the two of you is the worse,’ Maggie said, which only increased Michael’s laughter.

Maggie had her first child, a son, that summer and she and Mark took him to Great Meadow a month later. To Maggie’s intense disappointment Moran evinced little interest in his grandson. Only with great pressing did he agree to be photographed with the baby in the front garden.

‘Who wants to look at an old thing like me?’ he complained and there was no teasing in the complaint.

‘That baby is too young for travelling,’ Moran said to Rose. ‘They’d be better to hold on to their money and stay in their own house.’

‘You know young mothers. They imagine the sun shines down on their child.’

‘Shines out of their mouths and arses,’ Moran answered sourly, and during the visit he was more drawn to Mark than to the woman and child. Mark was flattered by the attention and liked to engage Moran in man-to-man conversation. Inevitably it came round to Moran’s sons.

‘Michael is young and just thinks of girls but he’ll settle down. There’s far more nature in him than in Luke,’ Mark said, though he disliked Michael. ‘Luke is different. You’d never know what he is thinking. He’s turning himself into a sort of Englishman.’

‘Does he ever talk of coming home? You’d think he’d mention something like that after all these years.’

‘We put it to him, me and Maggie, that he should go home, but he said he wouldn’t.’

‘Did he give any reason?’

‘He said he had no interest in family matters, if you can believe that.’

‘Does he see people much?’

‘Mostly English. People he works with. He’s always busy. I told you, Michael, he has made himself into a kind of Englishman. He sees an English girl. I don’t know whether she’s girlfriend or wife or mistress or what. They seem to be living together.’

‘I’m sure I don’t want to know about it, Mark. There are people who say we have had other existences than our present life. If that is so I must have committed some great crime in that other existence. That is all I can put Luke down to.’

As they were waiting on the station for the train to take them back to London Moran said to Maggie while Mark was getting cigarettes for the journey, ‘I’ve learned to appreciate Mark. He seems to take an interest in our family.’

During and after the visit Moran began to spend much of his time in bed in a lethargy of spirit rather than any illness. The hay had been saved. There was no real work in the fields. It was enough for Rose to throw her eye twice a day over the cattle. If there was anything wrong she would tell Moran, and they kept only dry cattle now. They were healthy and fat, ankle- deep in aftergrass.

It was the time of year Rose waited for, the rush and anxiety of the summer over, the hardness of winter not yet in. There was a great sense of space and time about the house. She was able to prepare her flowerbeds in the front garden for the winter, leaving the door open so that she was sure of hearing Moran if he called. In the orchard she picked the last of the plums and gathered some of the apples. Mona and Sheila came from Dublin every weekend. When they had the chores done she would sit with the two girls over a coffee and a cigarette, a few floating specks of dust showing in the stream of quiet sunshine that poured through the window. A few times they chatted for so long that it annoyed Moran and he shouted at them from the room.