John McGahern - The Barracks

They brushed their tears and settled themselves to their work.

“That’s the way,” she encouraged. “You were making a big thing out of nothing.”

Reegan had moved to the window, made to feel out of place by the delicacy of the scene between the woman and children.

“It’s all right about the ambulance,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she answered.

The blinds were down, the lamp lit, the children at their exercises, and the night repeating itself in the same order of so many nights. Once she had wanted to protect this calm flow of life against Reegan, she’d succeeded, and what did it matter? Did it make any real difference? Tomorrow night she’d be in a hospital bed and this’d continue or break up without her.

She started to lay out the things she’d need there and she then went to their bedroom. It was lonely and intensely quiet in the room, with the flame of the small glass oil-lamp blowing in the draughts.

She unlocked the wooden trunk she’d brought about with her all her life. It held bundles of letters and photos and certificates and testimonials, a medal she had won in her final examination, some books, a withered plane leaf, a copybook of lecture notes, and other things that’d be junk to everybody else — except what her hands sought, a roll of money.

So she hadn’t trusted much, she’d been afraid. Was this why it had failed? she pondered. With this money she could always be in London in the morning. She had not given herself fully, she had always been essentially free.

“You can only give one thing really to anybody — that’s money. Love and sympathy and all that kind of stuff is just moonshine and ballsology. Give a person money and tell them to take a tour for themselves. Tell them to go and look about themselves. That’s all you can do, if you feel yourself moved,” she had heard Halliday say bitterly once. Many of the letters in the trunk were his, all the books. She did not know. She might never get back to this house. Maybe, she should destroy these things now, she’d hate anybody else reading through them, but then what did the dead care? She locked the trunk, leaving everything undisturbed, except the money she took. She’d take it to the hospital. But when she saw Reegan and the children in the bare kitchen she began to be tortured with what was still too present to be called remorse, she should tell them, they were all together, it was their money as much as hers; but she could not, she wished she had long ago, it’d be too complicated and dreadful now to tell. And if it all came out when she was dead, how could she be hurt then? She would not even think. “No, no, no, no,” came on her breath, the echo of the mind’s refusal to endure more torture.

Mullins came. “I got back at last,” he stated.

“No one came since,” Reegan informed him.

“You could sit down there for a year and nothing’d happen and then the once you’d take a chance you’d be caught out,” Mullins said and stood awkwardly there till he managed to say, “I hope you don’t think that I’m too full of curiosity, but is it right that you’re goin’ to the hospital, Elizabeth?”

She met Reegan’s eyes: he had said that nothing could be kept secret in a place as small as this.

“I have to go tomorrow,” she said.

“I’m very sorry to hear that but I hope it’ll be all right.”

“It’s only for a check-up.”

“With the help of God it’ll be nothing and if there’s anything I can do …” he offered.

“No, no. Thank you, John. It’ll be only for a few days.”

“I’m glad to hear it’s not serious,” and he had nothing more to say and still no excuse to go with ease. He stood there waiting for something to release him. The children watched. It was Reegan who finally relieved the awkwardness.

“Will you put me out on patrol? It’ll save me going down to the books.”

“Where?” Mullins beamed to life.

“Some of the bog roads. Some place where not even Quirke’s huarin’ car can get.”

“So it’s a patrol of the imagination so,” Mullins laughed the barrack joke.

“A patrol of the imagination!” Reegan laughed agreement.

“As sound as a bell so! It’ll be done while Johnny Atchinson is thrashin’ ashes in Johnny Atchinson’s ash hole! I bet you not even Willie’d say that quick without talkin’ about arse holes.…”

He was his old self. He laughed as he pounded down the hallway and the house shivered with the way he let the dayroom door slam.

“Some people should ride round this house on bulldozers,” Reegan said as he put down a newspaper on the cement and let the beads run into his palm. “We better get the prayers over because, unless I’m mistaken, this house’ll be full of women soon.”

They came before Elizabeth had her packing finished, all the policemen’s wives, Mrs Casey and Mrs Brennan and Mrs Mullins. They were excited, the intolerable vacuum of their own lives filled with speculation about the drama they already saw circling about this new wound.

“It’s only for a few days. It’s only for an examination,” Elizabeth tried to keep it from taking wild flight, but they were impatient of any curb. They went over the list of things she’d need. They offered the loan of some things of their own. They talked about their experiences in hospitals and doctors and nurses and diseases. They gave pieces of advice. Tea was made. The children were sent to bed.

Reegan had no part in the conversation. He moved restlessly about the house, not wanting to leave Elizabeth on her own.

Ten came and there was no sign of them going. He turned on the radio full blast to listen to the news and let it blare away up to eleven through the Sweepstake programme.

Eventually he found a pair of shoes to mend and it became a real battle. The ludicrously loud belting of the nails above the radio music and the deliberate scraping of the last on the cement made it painful to try to talk but they stayed militantly on till he gave up.

Elizabeth felt herself near madness by the time it was over. She didn’t wait to listen to his curses when they’d gone. She let him do all the small jobs she’d always done herself before sleep, and struggled to their room without caring what kind of unconsciousness overcame her there as long as it came quickly.

The ambulance took her away at four the next day and spring came about the barracks that week as it always did, in a single Saturday: bundles of Early York, hundredweights of seed potatoes and the colourful packets of flower and vegetable seed the children collected coming from the Saturday market. Spades and forks and shovels, cobwebs on the handles, were brought out into the daylight; the ball of fishing-line that kept the ridges straight was found after a long search, beneath the stairs. In the night Reegan sat with a bag of the seed potatoes by his side, turning each potato slowly in the lamplight so as to see the eyes with the white sprouts coming, and there was the sound of the knife slicing and the plopping of the splits into the bucket between his legs.

Mullins and Brennan were splitting the seed in their kitchens exactly as he was there, and Monday they’d be planting in the conacre they rented each year from the farmers about the village. Reegan alone had the use of the barrack garden, but he’d not be able to spend as much time there as they would in the fields — it was open to the village road and anybody passing. The other two would do nothing but plant in the next weeks, all their patrols would be patrols of the imagination as they joked, carried out on these plots of ground. They knew Reegan didn’t care and always a child was posted on the bridge to warn them if Quirke or the Chief Super appeared. They couldn’t afford to buy vegetables and potatoes for their large families: their existence was so bare as it was that Mullins was never more than a few days on the spree when they were getting credit in the shops or borrowing or going hungry.