John McGahern - The Barracks

Then the nights came and the hours of dusk she loved, lamps of the cars would shoot up, a pair of glowing yellow eyes on a stretch of road on the Dublin mountains she could see through the poplars, and race down to the city. To what restaurant or theatre or marvellous place were they going? She could be in one of those cars, delicate perfume mingling with the cigarette-smoke and the warm leather, in love with a happy dream of someone, and going out to a lovely evening.

She’d have to smile: it was too ridiculous. An ignorant wife of a police sergeant lying with cancer in a hospital, watching cars on a mountain road to pass the time, and having such dreams, it was such a fantastic comedy, and when she’d grow tired of her own she could turn and watch the others play.

The visitors were coming, conscious of eyes watching them from all the beds, and making their entrance as stiltedly as if someone had thrust the flowers or chocolates or fruit into their arms and pushed them out beyond the footlights to play, Keep your heart up, I’m comin’ to visit you .

Nearly twenty must have come and the fantastic thing was that no two had come the same; and what difference did it make that they had no spectators except in their own heated imaginations, for no one in the beds really cared how they made their little entrances or departures; and the people most concerned, the people they had come to visit, were too busy trying to make a good show of the receiving to notice anything else. Though how on earth could that be known, they were all involved in their life in the visit, and there was nothing besides?

What kind of entrance and departure would she herself make, Elizabeth thought and knew she’d escape none of the lunacy of living because she could sometimes see, she’d be as blind with life, as ridiculously human as any other when it came to her turn. She and they were involved together: they jigacted with millions of others across a screen’s moment, passionately involved in their little selves and actions, each of them in their own mind the whole world and everything; all of them tragic figures in their death, there was no joke there byjesus, the whole world falling when they fell. It was so fantastic, and so miraculous that it could go in spite of having no known purpose, blind passion carrying it forward in spite of everything. She was able to smile with some of the purity of music. She was still and calm and surely this way she saw was a kind of human triumph, even though this mood, as all her moods, was soon to change.

A fortnight before she was due to go home she was given a course of radiotherapy and the after-effects of it in the evenings were to make her ill and miserable.

She knew that the carcinoma must be pretty far advanced if they were giving her this, it destroyed the cells, they wouldn’t be able to operate again. The chances must be all against her, she’d think; she’d go home out of this and be able to walk and work about for a little while and then one day the pains would get too much and she’d have to go to bed to wait to die. That was the way, that was mostly the way, most of them went that way, and she’d have to lie down that way too. She was no different, that was the terrible thing, she was no more than a fragment of the same squalid generality. She’d have to go home and walk about and lie down and wait the same as the rest. She shuddered, she felt miserable, and the way her body felt made her see things different, she was frightened at how little control she had of everything. She could see no good in the ward, the ward where she had been so unbelievably happy days before.

The conversations all began to seem so mean and petty. Over at the far side she heard a woman boast, “Since my husband has been made head of his department things haven’t been the same. He hasn’t enough time. I often wish he never got it. The money and position are all right but it’s not worth it,” in a tone that implied that she considered herself head and shoulders above every one else in the ward. She was belittling her position so that they’d be able to feel comfortable in her presence, not for a moment would she dream of insisting on her superiority.

A deadly silence followed before she was given her answer, a voice pretending to make a general statement to the ward, as casual as if it was remarking on the weather.

“It’s surprisin’ that some people come into the ordinary hospitals at all, it’s a great wonder they don’t go into the private clinics.”

“That’s right,” an abetting voice joined, “but these places are very expensive and select. They cost money.”

They cost money , Elizabeth murmured. How the first poor bitch would be suffering scalds of vanity now. They had her by the heels. They’d drag her down. She had watched greyhounds once let out of their kennels into a walled yard and they had come excited and roused, biting and shouldering and trying to ride each other, careering round and round on the straw. A brindled dog, weaker than any of the others, suddenly went silly with excitement, made a ridiculous, pawing leap in the air to crash against the wall and fall. The pack were on him almost before he fell. The trainer had to rush in and cane them away or they’d have torn him to bits.

She had never forgotten. She kept her thoughts to herself. Even in the hospital she took good care to buy an evening paper when the man with the trolley came. She never said anything in her conversations that ran counter to the average communal welter. She had her private life and dreams, at least that much joy; she had little belief that people could be really influenced or changed, and she wasn’t going to risk her own joy in this useless and doubtful acrimony.

She listened to the first woman try to make a come-back and she hadn’t a chance. She must be so stupid, Elizabeth thought, though it seemed too pathetic to pass judgement. One poor person trying to raise herself on the stilts of her husband’s promotion and the others busy as hell sawing her down. Of course she was a beautiful and unappreciated person in her own mind, she had come from fine people but if she grew tall as her own estimation she cast a shadow on the others and every one wanted her own share of the sun of recognition. They had to drag her down as she had to seem tall, all tied in the knot of each other, without being able to attain pure love or silence or selfishness or pure anything else. Elizabeth pressed her face to the pillows. She’d have to go under the sickening treatment again tomorrow, though soon she’d be home, away out of this, in only three days, in the last days of June, hay-time. She’d hear the machines and the din of the corn-crakes at night and the wild smell of hay would be all about the barracks, she promised to help herself face another night.

The Council ambulance took her home, it had brought a patient in that morning, and by bringing her back with them they saved Reegan the trouble and expense of a journey. There was plenty of sunshine in the ward as she left and she began to miss the things she’d miss when she was home. Always easy to love something or somebody when you know you don’t have to endure them any more, when the goodbyes are being waved, and you can have your dream and choice of them instead of their solid, individual and demanding presence.

Though there was no danger that she’d linger. Outside everything was summery and true and by four she was out of the city, riding in front between the driver and nurse. The windows were down and they could feel the breeze and the driver was in his shirt-sleeves. People were making hay in the roadside meadows and cattle were trying to beat away the flies in the shade. They laughed and talked. Before Edgeworthstown the driver had to pull down the sun-shield, the evening had sunk, and they were driving west into the level glare.