John McGahern - The Barracks

“Thursday, Daddy. It’s the day of the court.”

He took a moment to absorb what she said and then his eyes searched swiftly for the clock on the table: it was five past eight. “Christ, I forgot,” he swore as he jumped out of bed. “Another blasted day in town.”

He was downstairs almost with her in his collarless shirt and trousers and stockinged feet. He stopped to listen at the dayroom door: but there was no noise of Mullins moving.

“You must have been up early,” he praised Elizabeth when he felt the kitchen warm with the blazing fire.

“I thought not to wake you,” she replied.

“Is there water boiled?”

“It’s ready — when you want it.…”

He took down the plain wooden box that held his shaving-kit from the top of the medicine press and opened it on the sewing-machine to get his cut-throat razor and he stroked it over and back on a strip of fine leather tacked to the side of the press. After he’d tested its sharpness he laid it carefully on a newspaper in the window and searched the box for the brush and stick of soap.

Elizabeth poured the hot water into the basin in the scullery, watched the steam rapidly rise up to cloud the mirror in the window, and took a clean towel from the clothes-horse to hand to one of the waiting girls.

“When he’s finished,” she said, for the ritual of these court mornings never varied.

The child waited till the scraping of the razor stopped and he was sousing himself with water. She was beside him when he turned, his eyes blind with soap, the large hands groping.

They were quiet in the kitchen as he sat to his breakfast, but the alarm had gone down in the dayroom. Mullins was up, pounding upstairs with mattress and load of bedclothes, dragging the iron bed in against the wall of the lock-up. His poker and tongs banged on the concrete as he set the fire going. They heard him unlock the outside door and the boots go on the frozen ground down to the ashpit at the bottom of the garden, with his bucket and piss-pot.

He came up to the kitchen in his greatcoat and cap a little later. His red face was burning blue, the pores plainly visible in the swollen flesh. He hadn’t washed.

“That’s a powerful smell, the fryin’, Elizabeth, on a frosty morning. It has me driven wild already with the hunger. Freeze the arse of a brass monkey, this mornin’ would. A holy terror to get out of bed,” he spoke.

“That’s six days of frost,” she said, the social makeweight of these comings and goings was always left to Elizabeth.

“Six days surely, though anything’s better than the wet. But wouldn’t we be worse off if we had nothing at all to be complainin’ about,” he remarked and chuckled over his own wit at the door.

“That’s true, I suppose,” she smiled.

“We’re all off today,” he said. “Casey’ll be holdin’ the fort on his own.”

He turned to Reegan and stated that he was going to get his breakfast and shine himself up for the court, he’d be back soon after nine to leave the books in order and go with them to the town.

“The door’s left open, so you’ll hear the phone if be any miracle it rings. The day in town’ll be a bit of a change,” he said.

Reegan continued with his meal in silence after Mullins went. Sometimes he watched out past the sycamore and netting-wire to the white field that went down to the river, the calm strip of black water moving through the whiteness, and the thorn hedge half-way up the white hill beyond. Sometimes he watched his own face eating in the sideboard mirror, completely silent. He disliked Elizabeth asking, “Are there many cases today?” “Not many,” he said.

He’d give her no information. His mind had been a painless blank, watching his own face and the images of white field and river and white hill, and not relating them to anything and not thinking. Now she had forced her way into this total blankness and disturbed him with thought of her and the day.

“Not many,” was meant to cut her out again but he could not.

“I only wanted to know whether you’d be home early for your dinner or not,” he had to listen to her injured tones. He had to wake to some sense that she’d been hurt.

“Only one big case — last month’s crash at the quarry,” he imparted. “It’ll depend on when it’s called. We might be out in an hour and we might be there till night. If we’re not home before two you’ll know we’ll be fairly late.”

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes that she held back. She felt her strength draining and sat on the side of one of the wooden chairs, her arm on its back. It was early morning, excited with the preparations for the court, and she was as worn as if she’d been on her feet for days. She felt herself go weak. She had to grip the back of the chair fiercely, use all her determination not to go down. She could not let herself collapse. The fit passed; but she’d not be able to go on long like this, not more than days now; in the desperation she took her courage in both hands.

“Would you call at the doctor’s and ask him what would be a good time to see him tomorrow?” she asked quietly. “I think I’d better go for a check-up.”

The asking brought a dramatic silence that she shrank from, even the children turned quiet to fix her with their attention. She was drooped and deathly pale.

“You don’t look well,” he said with unthinking cruelty. “You’ve not been yourself since Christmas.”

“I don’t think it’s anything,” she protested. “It’s only to make sure.”

She was haggard.

“I’ll tell him to come out,” he said.

“No, no. It’d cost too much.”

“Cost,” he derided angrily. “We’re not paupers.”

“No. There’d be no sense in him coming. I’m well able to cycle. And I’d like the day in town.”

She tried to brush it off as nothing. With all her will she rose from the chair. She lifted off the boiling kettle, put on a saucepan.

“It’s nothing at all,” she smiled casually with every muscle in her face. “It’s only to be sure.”

She stood still, making a pretence of tending the fire. She could hear her heart beating. She regretted having ever spoken.

She saw Reegan rise to change into his best boots, the ones Una had polished. He sheathed the razor and put his shaving things back in the box to take out the button brush and the brass stick and tin of Silvo. There began the scrupulous brushing of his tunic and greatcoat and cap, the buttons drawn together in a row on the brass stick and coated with Silvo, the letting it dry and then the shining, even the medallions on the collar and cap, the whistle chain that went across the tunic to the breast pocket, were polished till they shone like brightnesses. And last of all the black baton sheath was shone; the baton — a short vicious stick of polished hickory filled with lead, the grooved surface tapering to where a leather thong hung from the handle for securing it about the wrist in action — was placed in the sheath and hung from the belt of the tunic. He squared himself before the sideboard mirror, shaved and handsome, stuffing the fresh hankie she handed him up his sleeve.

He turned his back for their inspection. There wasn’t a speck on the uniform.

“He’ll not be able to find much fault today,” he said.

No one could, he was shining.

“Will I leave your bike round at the dayroom door?” Willie wanted to know.

“Do, and see if the tyres are pumped,” he was told.

Down in the dayroom the window was lifted up and the key taken from the sill, it was Brennan, for the next minute Casey appeared through the archway. The time was exactly nine. Reegan had to go down to them to sign and call the roll. He’d not return to the kitchen unless he’d forgotten something, but leave with the others from the dayroom.