John McGahern - Amongst Women

The weekend visits allowed Rose to visit her own house by the lake, leaving Moran in the girls ‘care. This was a gentle renewal. There had been years when she felt that she had abandoned her own house for Great Meadow. She did not take the car. ‘I’m afraid Daddy would not be long in bed if he heard I hit something with the car!’ She cycled and always she brought plums and apples and jam in the cane basket on the handlebars. ‘Daddy used to think I was taking half the house with me when I went after we were first married. Now he never notices that I go with anything,’ she said to the girls.

‘Why do you think he doesn’t?’ Sheila smiled as she asked. It was so quiet that it was hardly teasing.

‘I don’t know. I suppose he’s used to it now. Daddy is strange,’ she said.

‘Daddy is growing old,’ Sheila said matter of factly to Mona when Rose had cycled out of hearing and Mona caught her breath as if afraid and then nodded.

He never gave any explanation as to why he took to his bed at that time. No one dared question him either. It was as if it were quite normal to stay in bed without illness for part of a late summer and normal again to rise and go about the house and fields as if he had never taken to his bed.

That winter Sheila announced her engagement to Sean Flynn and after that she did not come home very often. The excuse she made was that she and Sean were househunting. As if to make up for her absences Mona came alone every single weekend. Far more independent than Maggie, Sheila became engaged without benefit of Moran’s approval. Sean was easygoing, anxious to be liked and Moran saw him too as no threat. Sheila had governed the relationship from the beginning but she was quick to bridle at the offhand way Moran dealt with Sean on their last visit.

In much the same way as she had wanted to go to university, she set her heart on a white wedding in June at the little village church. This Moran could not face. He would have to lead her up the aisle in front of people he spent his life avoiding, invite some of them to the reception in the Royal Hotel and pay for them to eat and drink. This he would not endure.

‘It’d be simpler if she got married in Dublin,’ Rose found a way out for him. She was frightened that he would refuse point-blank to attend and this wedding couldn’t be hidden away in London. ‘We wouldn’t have to invite everybody. There’d just be the two families. And we don’t have to go to the Shelbourne or Gresham. There are many small hotels. Round Harcourt Street they’d cost even less than the Royal,’ Rose explained to Moran.

‘Maybe that’s the way we’ll have to do it then. I don’t know why people have to go to all this fuss to be married. Wasn’t the way we were married good enough for anybody?’

‘You can forget that, Daddy. All the girls nowadays want a big day. Who can blame them? They see everybody else with style and want the same for themselves,’ Rose said.

Sheila cried a little when she discovered that she would not be making vows at the same altar rail at which she had received her Confirmation and First Communion, would not be coming out of the church into the shade of those great evergreens that had guarded her childhood. But she wanted Moran at her wedding. Faced with the choice, she wanted Moran more than any particular altar rail or beloved trees. ‘Anyhow I never see those trees without thinking of Guinea Flanagan.’ She spoke of a boy who got his name by climbing into the trees and imitating the wild cries of the guinea fowl while her class waited for the priest to come down the avenue in dry winter evenings when they were being prepared for Confirmation.

‘Maybe it is just as well not to be reminded of something as silly as that on your wedding day,’ she persuaded herself but her resentment surfaced when she invited Luke to her wedding without consulting anybody.

Rose managed to get Moran to leave the farm for a few days. A relative of hers agreed to look after the stock while they were away. They stayed with a brother of Rose’s in Dublin and the evening before the wedding Sheila took them out to look over the new house she and Sean had bought. It was a low, detached bungalow in a new estate of a couple of hundred bungalows exactly the same, the front gardens still raw with concrete. Already in some of the back gardens lines of nappies fluttered. Inside, the house had carpets and curtains and neat inexpensive furniture. Sheila showed off each room — stating the price of each piece of furniture — with touching pride.

‘Aren’t you the girl that set herself up comfortably from the very beginning?’ Rose embraced her in congratulation.

‘Sean is worried we spent too much,’ Sheila confided.

‘Don’t pay a bit of attention,’ Rose whispered. ‘Men are all like that. Get everything you need while you have the chance.’

Moran walked through the house that looked like an empty stage waiting for their lives together to begin, plainly searching for something to say but at a loss. ‘It must have all come to money,’ he said at last.

‘I’m afraid we’ll be paying for it for the rest of our lives,’ Sheila answered awkwardly.

‘Well I hope you’ll be happy here. If you are happy that’s all that counts. You can have as much of everything that’s going but if you’re not happy it’s all useless,’ he said. He was anxious to get away.

‘You see, Daddy is no sooner in any place but he wants to be out the door again,’ Rose teased him about what was equally true of herself.

At the door Sheila finally told them that Luke was coming to the wedding. Rose was startled and looked to Moran at once. His face clouded over at the news and was grave.

‘I’m glad you invited him,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like to think that any member of my family was ever excluded from a family gathering,’ but his step was far from joyous as he walked away from the house.

Luke and Maggie and Michael flew over together to the wedding. Luke was flying back to London the same evening. Both Michael and Maggie had taken a few days off and were going down to Great Meadow.

‘Please don’t do anything to upset Daddy,’ Maggie pleaded as the plane prepared to land.

‘Of course not. I won’t exist today,’ Luke answered.

‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked anxiously.

‘It’s Sheila’s big day. To draw attention to myself would hardly be good manners.’ He wore black shoes, a dark pinstripe suit and a deep red tie and he looked very sober by Michael’s side, whose suit was a flashing blue. They took a taxi from the airport to the church and were the first to arrive. On the empty concrete outside the church if Luke was nervous he showed no sign of it as they waited, smiling reassurances back to each of Maggie’s silent inquiries. Michael appeared to find the whole situation amusing and several times broke into unsuppressed laughter.

‘I’m glad you find everything so funny,’ Maggie said sharply which sent him again into peals of laughter.

‘I can’t take it any other way.’

‘Take what?’ she asked, exasperated.

‘The whole set-up,’ he laughed. ‘The whole bloody lot of us and yer man at the helm.’

‘It’s one way to deal with it,’ Luke said quickly to calm Maggie. ‘I’m sure there are worse ways and worse set-ups.’

The groom and his family were the first to arrive. Sean Flynn introduced them quickly to Maggie and the two brothers.

‘I suppose we should be all going in,’ Sean said.

‘I’ll wait till the bride gets here,’ Luke said and the three waited on. Sheila and Rose and Mona and Moran all came in the same car. Mona was the bridesmaid. After he had embraced Sheila and Mona, Luke shook hands formally with Rose and Moran.

‘I’m glad you got here,’ Moran said darkly.