John McGahern - The Barracks

Casey’s wife was childless and when barrack orderly fell to his turn and he had to sleep nights in the dayroom, on the official iron bed between the phone and the wall of the lockup, Una would often have to go to sleep with her, for she couldn’t be got to stay alone in the house on these nights. Una would get sweets or pennies, the slice of fruit cake and the glass of orange if she went and she didn’t care whether Sheila had to sleep alone in their cold room or not, even when the smaller girl began to sob.

“What’s wrong, Sheila?” Elizabeth was quick to notice.

“I’m afraid. I don’t want to sleep on me own.”

“Oh, you’re a small girl no longer, Sheila. Una mightn’t be going yet at all. And even if she is we can leave the lamp lit! Shure you’ll not be afraid then, Sheila?”

Elizabeth coaxed and she was quietened. They turned to work again at their exercises, Elizabeth kneading dough in a tin basin on the table beside them, her arms bare to the elbows and a white dusting of flour on the back of her hands and wrists.

It was their father’s tyres they first heard going past on the loose gravel and, “Daddy’s home”, they said to Elizabeth. He’d leave his high policeman’s bicycle in the shed at the back and come in through the scullery.

His black cycling cape and pull-ups were shiny with wet when he came, his face chafed red with wind and rain. The narrow chinstrap held the cap firmly on his head, the medallion between the peak and the crown with its S twined through the Celtic G shining more vividly tonight against the darkened cloth. He carried his carbide bicycle lamp in his hand, big and silver, its blue jet of gas still burning, he left it to Willie to quench, quickly discarding his cycling clothes. The rain had penetrated the cape and pull-ups. There were dark patches of wet on the trousers, and on the tunic with its array of silver buttons, the three stripes of his rank on the sleeve.

“Wet to the bloody skin,” he complained. “A terrible night to have to cycle about like a fool.”

The children were very still. He had an intense pity for himself and would fly into a passion of reproaches if he got any provocation. They watched him take off his tunic and boots. His socks left wet prints on the cement when he stood up.

“All the clothes are aired,” Elizabeth said as she gave them to him off the back of the chair. “You’d better change quick.”

He changed in the dark hall that led down to the dayroom door at the bottom of the stairs and was soon back at the fire in his dry shirt and trousers. He towelled his face, then the back of his neck, then his feet. He pulled on socks and a pair of boots he didn’t bother to lace.

“A terrible night,” he muttered at the fire. “Not fit for a dog to be out in.”

“In what direction were you?” Elizabeth asked.

“Round be Derrada,” he answered.

He disliked talking about his police work in the house. He only answered Elizabeth because he needed to talk.

“And you’d never guess who I met?” he went reluctantly on.

“Who?”

“The bastard Quirke.”

“The Superintendent!” Her exclamation seemed a faint protest against the coarseness. “What had him out, do you think?”

“He was lukin’ for a chance he didn’t get, you can be sure!”

He began to recount the clash, speaking with a slow, gloating passion and constant mimicry.

“He stopped in front of me and pulled down the window and asked, ‘Is that you, Reegan?’

“‘That’s me, sir,’ says I.

“‘And is there some trouble?’

“‘No, sir,’ says I.

“‘And what has you out on a night like this?’

“‘I’m out on patrol, sir,’ says I.

“‘But are you mad, Reegan? Are you stone mad? No man in his senses would be out cycling on a night like this without grave reason. Good God, Reegan, don’t you realize that all rules and regulations yield at a certain point to human discretion? Do you want to get your death, man, cycling about on a night like this?’

“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ says I. ‘But I’ll not get the sack, sir.’”

No word was lost on the children who pretended to be busy with their exercises. It was an old feud between their father and Superintendent Quirke. They loved this savage mimicry and it frightened them. They heard him laugh fiendishly, “That shuk him! That’s what tuk the wind outa his sails! That’s what shut him up, believe me!”

Then he repeated Quirke in a high, squeaky voice, the accent so outrageously exaggerated that it no longer resembled anything human.

“‘Even regulations, Reegan, must yield at a certain point to human discretion — even the law! — even the law, Reegan! — must yield at a certain point to Human Discretion.’”

“But you’re only causing annoyance and trouble for yourself,” Elizabeth interrupted. “You’ll be only bringing him the more down on you. For the sake of a few words couldn’t you let it go with him? What does it all matter?”

“You mean it’ll be all the same in the end?” he asked shrewdly. “We’ll be all nice and quiet when we’re dead and gone — and nothin’ll matter then? Is that it?”

She did not answer. She felt she could care no longer. She knew he’d go his own way, he’d heed no one, opposition would make him only more determined.

“You never give a thought for anybody,” spun angrily over in her mind but she did not speak it. She feared she still loved him, and he seemed to care hardly at all, as if he had married a housekeeper. She watched him pull the jumper she had knitted for him over his head and draw on his old tunic, leaving the collar unclasped at the throat, the silver buckle of the belt swinging loosely on its black catches. It was more than four years now since she’d first met him, when she was home on convalescence from the London Hospital, worn out after nursing through the Blitz. She had come to the barracks to get some of her papers put in order. He happened to be on his own in the dayroom when she came. It was twelve, for the Angelus had rung as she left her bicycle against the barrack wall.

“It must have been a terror there in London durin’ the bombin’?” he had asked, a conventional thing to ask any one who had been there at the time and she smiled back the equally conventional, “You get used to it after a time. You go on almost as if nothing was happening after the first few scares.”

“It’s like a fella hangin’, I suppose,” he laughed. “He hasn’t much of a choice. But what amazes me, though, is that one of those rich Americans didn’t run off with a girl like you on us.”

She blushed hot at the flattery. He seemed so handsome to her in his blue uniform. He came to the door to see her out. She saw him watch from the barrack window as she cycled out the short avenue and turned left up the village.

The desire for such a day could drag one out of a sickness, it was so true to the middle of the summer. She felt so full of longing and happiness that she crossed from the shop to the chapel when she’d got the groceries for the house. The eternal medals and rosary beads were waiting on the spikes of the gate for whoever had lost them; the evergreens did not even sway in their sleep in the churchyard, where bees droned between the graves from dandelion to white clover; and the laurelled path between the brown flagstones looked so worn smooth that she felt she was walking on them again with her bare feet of school confession evenings through the summer holidays.

The midday glare was dimmed within, the church as cool as the stone touch of its holy water font, but she could get herself to say no formal prayer, all her habits and acceptances lost in an impassioned tumult of remembering.

A cart was rocking past on the road when she came out, its driver sunk deep in the hay on top of the load, a straw hat pulled down over his face. The way his body rolled to every rock and sway of the cart he could have been asleep in the sunshine. The reins hung slack. A cloud of flies swarmed about the mare’s head and her black coat was stained with sweat all along the lines of the harness, but they rolled on as if they had eternity for their journey.