John McGahern - The Barracks

She had said everything in her reaction from the breakdown. She wouldn’t have to use the sign language of concealment and fear any more, it was a miracle how she’d managed to tell everything. Reegan was shaken now.

“He said you may have cancer?” he repeated, not able to believe. He’d seen his first wife in the morgue and had experienced little except a desire never to see a dead face again. She was gone, he was frightened, his whole life would be upside down.

How could two wives die on the same man? It was incredible.

“He said you may have cancer,” he repeated, flinching at the clear viciousness of the word, “but he doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t know,” she started with painful hope.

“Where, does he think?”

“In the breast. There are cysts there. They may be malignant.…”

“When did you notice them?”

“A few weeks ago,” she lied.

“You never told?” he reproached.

“I thought that they were nothing,” she tried to excuse. “I didn’t want to cause you more trouble. I was feeling tired and didn’t know till he said.…”

She was near breaking again. She saw his eyes on her breasts in morbid fascination. No, he couldn’t want to see them now, she cried within herself: the church in which they had married had proclaimed them one flesh, but no, no, no.… People rotted apart. With fierce relief she heard the children come. It was half six. She’d been alone with Reegan all that length of time and it seemed gathered into the intensity of a single moment. At seven the doctor would ring and she had many things to do before then. She put the steeped slices of bacon on the pan. Rain spat at her when she went out to the barrels for water. That was why the children must have come in, she thought. She heard the unearthly cry of the foxes in their season from the brushwoods along the river. It always filled her with terror, this raw cry of animal heat. She smelled the bacon frying as pure sweetness when she closed the door. There was a white cloth on the table, cups, sugar, bread, butter. The kettle was singing on the fire. They had even chairs to sit in. Soon the children would light the lamp with her, draw the blinds against that night. Mullins was coming up the hallway.

“That frying has me driven mad, Elizabeth. I can’t stand it any longer. I’m off for the auld tea. So I’ll leave the door open and you’ll be able to hear the phone or anyone knocking,” he said as if he had never known himself to say it before.

“Brennan didn’t come?” Reegan asked.

“He must have got held up!”

“You should have gone before,” Reegan said, “You should have gone at six. I’d have told you to go only I thought Brennan had relieved you.”

“Don’t worry, Sergeant. The auld appetite is the better for it. Hunger is good sauce,” he laughed. “And these things’ll all right themselves in a hundred years, isn’t that it?”

“Leave the key on the sill,” Reegan called, “in case Brennan comes.”

“He’s not likely to come now but I’ll leave it there. Well, I’m off at last in God’s truth,” he laughed, did a kind of dance shuffle with his feet, swept off his cap in mock flourish, and was gone whistling down the hallway.

“It’s better they’re makin’ them these days,” Reegan smiled dryly and they were at ease again.

They took their evening meal. Elizabeth couldn’t take her eyes off Reegan. What was he thinking? His face was a mask. Was he fed up with her? Was he thinking of the hospital bills? Was he thinking that this was another shackle to hold him longer in the police? Was he regretting ever marrying her?

“It’ll be a devil to get to sleep for the next weeks with that cryin’,” was all he remarked as the mating call of the foxes came loud and fierce from the brushwoods.

At exactly seven the phone rang and he asked: “Will you go down, Elizabeth?”

“No. You go down,” she said.

The ringing came above his boots on the cement as he went, above his boots on the boards of the dayroom. He did not shut the door. They heard his, “Hello”, as the ringing stopped.

“Is there something wrong, Elizabeth?” Willie asked, sensing the tenseness.

“Why?” she responded neurotically.

“No why, Elizabeth. I just thought with the phone and that,” he bent his head, rebuffed.

Her whole attention was on the conversation between Reegan and the doctor. The barracks was dead still, but she could hear nothing, the doctor obviously doing most of the talking, the little Reegan said muffled by the receiver.

Then it was over. The receiver clicked as it was laid back in its cradle.

There was that terrible moment of searching blank features for information when he came, information that was given seconds later, “He got a bed for tomorrow. The ambulance will be here at four,” he said.

“The ambulance,” she repeated, with visions of the cream van with the red cross coming in the avenue.

“The whole village will know,” she said.

He came close to her. Then he saw the three children gazing with open curiosity. He stopped to shout, “Have you no lessons to do tonight? Have you nothing to do but stand there?” and he watched them pretend to go to their schoolbags.

“It doesn’t matter, everybody gets the ambulance, it’s there for us as well as the next,” he said. “I can’t go tomorrow and it’ll be better and quicker that way. He says you may be only a few days there. What does it matter about them knowin’? They’ll know anyhow, nothing can be kept secret in a place as small as this.”

He wouldn’t ask Quirke for a free day, it would seem like asking a favour, she suspected; but there was no charity in that thinking. The children were staring again in open curiosity.

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “You’re quite right. And, it’d be better to tell the children now.”

“I am going away to hospital tomorrow,” she confided. “Not for long. Only for a few days.”

Tears came in their eyes. Their own mother had gone to hospital years ago and never came back. She had gone to heaven.

They hadn’t seen coffin or hearse or anything. She’d been taken from the hospital to the church in the evening and buried the next afternoon. The slow funeral bell had tolled both times, they’d heard noise of heavy traffic, the blinds of the house were down in the broad daylight, but they’d seen nothing. Afterwards, they were allowed out to play on the avenue.

Two men they knew who often brought them down the river meadows came in the avenue with fishing-rods. They rushed to meet them, “Will you bring us down the meadow today?”

The pair of men were put ill at ease. They searched each other’s face.

“Not today. Some other day.”

“Please, please, please … You brought us before?”

“Did you not hear about your mother?”

“They told us. She is being buried now, but they said we could play. Please, can we go?”

“Not today,” they refused. “Some other day. And we’ll catch a big pike,” and they watched them go with longing, the flowers shining out of the thick greenness of the meadows, white stones on the shore of the river, the cattle standing with the water to their bellies in the heat and the fish rising.

The people came from the funeral and they had asked, “When is Mammy coming back from heaven?”

“When God tells her. Very soon, if you pray to God.”

They’d got tired asking and getting the same answer. Elizabeth had come and they’d almost forgotten. Now it was Elizabeth who was going to hospital.

“I’ll be only a few days there,” she persuaded. “You must finish your exercises for school tomorrow. If you don’t do them now, how can I expect you to do them when I’m away?’