John McGahern - The Barracks

A letter arrived a week later from Elizabeth. She told him not to come to see her, she was happy and recovered, she’d be home by the end of June. It’d be silly to make the long journey to Dublin when she’d be so soon home, she said.

He took her at her word, and wrote two more laborious letters, nights he was barely able to keep his head from sliding down to the notepaper on the table. The strain of the work had him physically jaded and no end was in sight. When the clamps dried he’d have to cart them out to the road with borrowed donkeys. The lorries would take them from there to the town. He forced himself on and on, he could always find energy, so fierce this passion to get money and his freedom that it drove him like a whiplash. Only in the drawn sag of his face when he relaxed over his supper at the end of the rosary did the strain show, and in the increasing risks he took. He spent little time at his police work. He had gone lucky so far but it was unlikely to continue so for ever.

The potato stalks were a green sway of leaves in the garden, flecked with their tiny blossoms, blue of Kerr’s Pinks, white of Arran Banners, red of Champions. June was nearly ended, in a week Elizabeth would be home, the children have holidays from school. Thunder showers and evenings when the midges swarmed out of the sycamores and the edges of a few potato leaves burned black with blight warned them it was time to spray.

On a Saturday Reegan told the children to put the spraying barrel out in the garden, fill it with water from the river, steep the bluestone he had left ready, and he’d spray when he got back off patrol.

They had to roll the wooden barrel, stand it on its end to work it through the gate at the lavatory. Half-way across they placed it at the foot of the ridges, where the wild part of the garden ran down to the ash trees and the river. They tramped a pass through the wild meadow and the nettles and briars between the trees to get with their buckets to the water. Through meal bags thrown across the mouth of the barrel and secured with twine they strained the water to catch grass-seed and leaves and dirt that could clog the machine. Then they tied the bag of bluestone to a pole and set it to steep and put down a pot of water to boil so that Reegan could melt the washing soda when he came home.

He was late, and changed out of his uniform as soon as he’d eaten, melted the soda, and hurried out to the waiting barrel without making his report or signing the books.

The bluestone had melted, the solution blue-green of the sea on a cloudy day, and as he spilled the washing soda in it changed to a miracle of rich turquoise, white foam boiling to the top and clinging to the pole with which he whirled the mixture round the sides of the barrel. Then he rested the knapsack sprayer on the edge of the barrel, took a small delf jug to fill the can, and strapped it on his shoulders to spray, its copper covered under the blue coats of its years.

Brennan came out from b.o. duty in the dayroom and leaned over the netting-wire.

“That’s what’ll keep the blight away,” he called.

“It’s more than time too,” Reegan shouted. “Some of the leaves are burned.”

Brennan came into the garden to examine the blight on the leaves.

“It’s time I sprayed my own so,” he said. “I suppose I can bring the can with me tonight. Mullins’ll be wantin’ to spray too if he hears about the blight.”

“Bring it tonight, surely,” Reegan laughed.

He felt the pressure on the pump as he drove it down to his hip. He turned on the tap. The two jets hissed out on the leaves. The strong, matted stalks broke apart as he backed up the furrow, the leaves showing a dull silver where they were upturned. Pools of blue gathered in the hollows of the leaves, they glistened green with wet, and then started to drip heavily in the silence, the way trees drip after rain. He had sown these potatoes, covered them with mould again when the first leaves ventured into the spring frosts, kept the weeds from choking them till they grew tall and blossomed, now he was spraying them against the blight this calm evening and he was happy.

“What kind of a crop have you, Jim?” he asked out of mischief.

“The best crop you’d see on a day’s walk,” Brennan boasted. “They’re as high as your hips and all blossom. That’s why I’m so anxious about the sprayin’.”

“O God!” Reegan laughed inwardly; though it wasn’t fair, he thought — poor Brennan was far too gullible.

The spray rocked in the can on his back as it emptied and then started to suck and the jets to weaken. He went with it to the barrel. Brennan had gone inside: he had thought to tell Reegan about the report he didn’t make and the books, but he was weak and afraid and Reegan could be too unpredictable.

The screaming of the saws rose and fell across the lake. The stalks were dripping. A few people rode by on bicycles. One of them said, “God bless the work,” and Reegan answered, “And yours too, when you’re at it,” and then Quirke’s Ford came across the bridge as carefully as any vehicle could come and turned in the avenue to stop at the barrack gate.

Reegan was rooted there with the spraying-can. He couldn’t move. Then he panicked to escape, lie down in the furrows or race for the shelter of the ash trees? No, he couldn’t do any of these, he might have been already seen, it’d be better to stand his ground and face it. What could Quirke do anyhow?

He wasn’t able to continue spraying as if he hadn’t seen the car. He had to stand still, listen to the door slam and feet on the gravel, wait for, “Good day, Sergeant.”

“Good day, sir,” he answered.

“I see you’re doing some spraying,” Quirke leaned his arms on the top of the netting-wire, gloves in his hand.

“That’s right, sir. It’s the weather for blight.”

“You’ve good ones there too.”

“They’re not bad,” Reegan managed a ghost of a smile.

“I’m just passing. I suppose I better go and sign these books.”

“Right, sir,” Reegan nodded and watched him go inside to Brennan and turned to spray in a fit of chagrin and desperation.

Everything in the day had gone dead, actual spray fell from the nozzles on actual leaves, and he tried to vent his frustration by pumping madly and damaging the locked stalks as he backed savagely up the furrows.

The pump sucked dry, he had to fill the can again, spilling the stuff in his need for violence. A heavy can burdened his back when he rose from the barrel and he couldn’t keep his mind off Quirke going through the books in the dayroom and the dayroom door opened and shut and Quirke was at the netting-wire. Reegan had to turn off the pump and stand to talk or listen, as Quirke willed.

“I noticed, Sergeant, that you’re still supposed to be out on patrol?” he demanded.

“It was three before I got back and I was in a rush to get this barrel out, it slipped my mind in the rush,” he explained, fit to take Quirke by the throat as he listened to himself in the servile giving of explanation.

“It’s all right this time, but don’t let it happen again. In your position it gives bad example. If you and I don’t do our work properly, how can we look to them to do theirs?”

“That’s right, I suppose,” Reegan agreed and a slow, cynical smile woke on his face. Quirke had expected a clash, it wouldn’t have been the first, and what seemed this sudden agreeableness satisfied and flattered him, he looked on himself as a patient and reasonable man. Perhaps, at last, Reegan was taming down, he was getting some glimmer of sense.

“And what cases have you for next Thursday?” he changed affably, he wanted to show Reegan that they weren’t enemies but in a team together, with a common cause and interest; and when Reegan outlined the few cases for him he began to discuss and explain Act this and Code that with a passion oblivious to everything but its petty object, while Reegan stood between the drills, the can on his back, the leakage seeping into his clothes. The listening smile faded to show frightening hatred as he listened, but he contrived to convert it into sufficient malicious cunning for Quirke not to notice.