John McGahern - The Barracks

She got away as quickly as possible each time. She had her shopping done. She came back to Timlin’s for Mrs Brennan’s prescription and had to wait a while, sitting on the chair between the weighing-machine and the Kodak girl, quiet and very clean there with the rubber advertising mats down, and not many came. She put the bottle she had already paid for in her bag when it was ready and left. At the bottom of Main Street she met the woman who kept the sweet shop beside the chapel in the village, the fourth person this day she had to stand to speak to.

“We had a good day for coming to town,” it went. “How did you get in? How’ll you get home? Will it be long till you’re going?”

She was going now. She was in a hurry. She was delighted to have met the other woman, they must have a long talk some time, but not just now, she simply had to rush. She had been in town all morning. She should have been gone an hour ago.

And she was free, crossing the bridge with her shopping-bag, and her bicycle was where she’d left it, at the post office. A slight wind had risen that blew with her. She climbed uphill out of the town and mounted the bike above it, her push-push-push on the pedals lulling her into the temporary effort and peace of its rhythm. Even when she had to walk the hills the conversations that began within her kept far from the cysts in her breasts, light and musing and futile.

“Why are you pushing this bike, Elizabeth?”

“To go home, of course!”

“But why do you want to get home?”

“Because I want to get home!”

“But why?”

“That’s the why!”

“That’s a stupid child’s answer!”

She went along the demesne wall Reegan had patrolled on that wet night in February, swollen green with ivy, the great beech trees stirring behind. Cars met and passed her, bicycles, a tractor, a coal lorry from the pits, three timber lorries. The rooks were mating in the bare sycamores about the Protestant Church and cawing and flapping clumsily about overhead.

“All answers are stupid and questions too,” the game continued in her head. “I am pushing the bike because I am pushing because I am pushing. I am going home because I am going home because I am going home.”

“But you must have some reason!”

“I want to go home.”

“But why?”

“But why?”

“But why ask? That’s it: why ask? I’m going home. I’m alive. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Men were gathered about tractors and a solitary horse at the forge beside the crossroads where she turned down the dirt track to the village. A cylinder of Calor gas was out on the street, the blacksmith or more mechanic now since he’d come home from Birmingham goggled as he stooped over a broken plough, the explosion of blue and white light shocking her passing eyes as the acetylene in his hand made contact with the steel.

She could see the village as she came downhill, the light staring her in the face, the woods across the lake, the mountains beyond with the sheds and gashes of the coal pits on the slopes, the river flowing through into the Shannon lowlands. The long pastures with black cattle and sheep, stone walls and thorn bushes came to meet her; and in a tillage field a tractor was ploughing monotonously backwards and forwards with its shadow.

“I am coming home and I am alive,” it at last decided and started to go over and over in her mind till it tired away.

Mullins was asleep by the fire and was not woken by her tyres passing the dayroom window on the gravel, but the two dark-haired girls came chasing, “We were watching the window for you, Elizabeth. We thought you must have got a puncture, Elizabeth,” and to carry the shopping-bag proudly in. Mrs Casey was there with a cigarette and smiling.

She gave them the sweets she brought and they cried out with excitement as the ceremony of dividing them began and the offering of their portions to Mrs Casey and then Elizabeth.

There was no use sidetracking the young woman’s curiosity. She told her that she was going into hospital for examination. She didn’t give any intimate information. Nothing would be known until she went into hospital, she said. She came with the other woman to the door after they had made cups of tea and thanked her there. She watched her go and she didn’t turn left through the archway but crossed the bridge towards the great stone house where the Brennans had rooms. The wind, Elizabeth thought, had risen: the days of frost were about to turn to spring rain.

Inside she heaped wood and turf on the fire, filled the kettle, hung it to boil, put some slices of bacon that were too salty in a bowl of warm water, all the time waiting for Reegan to come home. The hands of the clock were crawling up to five. At seven the doctor would ring. Surely Reegan would be home before then, surely she would not have to take the call on her own.

The children went out to play on the avenue. She heard their shouts about the archway. The minutes beat by in the stillness, the slow minutes waiting for him to come home; more than sixty minutes, for his blue uniformed bulk did not pass through the window light till it was almost six. The whole day had gone in waiting for this or that: it had torn her nerves, and all boiled into sudden hatred of Reegan. “Didn’t he know that she had been to the doctor? Couldn’t he make it his business to wait home for her? The patrols were not that necessary? What right had he to keep her suffering like this?” had gnawed all reason and vision away by the time he came.

His feet sounded on the cement of the street where the barrels stood under the eavespipes. He lifted off his cap and put it carelessly down on the sideboard, unbuttoning his greatcoat.

“You got back all right, Elizabeth,” he greeted smiling, and then he saw her waiting for him, her face tensed, the hour spent resenting his delay making it the image of the reproach she had not yet uttered.

“I was waiting here this past hour,” she cried with the maniacal temper of a child.

It was the last thing he had expected. He’d seen small flashes of resentment, and these but seldom, but never such an explosion. In his blind way he felt something terrible must have happened.

When she heard her own frustrated voice and saw him stand so shocked and frozen her feeling burst in tears. He came towards her and he was awkward. She felt ashamed. She’d betrayed herself. She’d let the stupid passion of resentment rise up through the frustration and strain of her life in this day and she had given full vent to it on Reegan for keeping her waiting. What right had she to expect Reegan to wait at home for her? She’d no right to expect anything. She hadn’t even the right to live.

Reegan didn’t know what to do but he did the right thing by instinct: he came to her. His first wife that he’d taken from the Show Dance in Sligo had often been like this, he’d have to pet and pleasure her or else affirm his male strength, and everything would come out all right in the embracing or sexual intercourse that always followed as naturally as sun after a shower. Elizabeth was different. He had never got close enough to be able to predict her but he was attentive and careful now and it was right.

“I didn’t think,” he said. “I never thought of this,” and then with stultifying awkwardness, “I love you, Elizabeth. It doesn’t make any difference, this! You know I love you, Elizabeth.”

She sobbed. Then he kissed her. She kissed him back. Tears blinded her eyes. She could not see, and now she was drowning in this emotional swoon. She must grip herself. She must, somehow, try to stand upright.

“What did the doctor say?” his common sense came with the pure relief of the first daylight.

“He said that I’ll have to go into hospital for examination. He’s afraid I may have cancer. He’s phoning at seven, he’s arranged about a bed in the County Hospital.”