John McGahern - The Barracks

Already she was dreaming of meeting them in the summer evening. Every known name and mark on the road set her nerves shivering. She was going home and it was such a thing to have a home to go to. What did it matter that she’d have to adjust herself bitterly to the lonely reality of it later, for if that reality wasn’t there how could she ever know the ecstasy of these hours that burned every boundary down?

It was weeks before she was able to take her full place in the house, the shock of homecoming over, the newness and strangeness of things that’d been familiar as the parts of her own body worn away, and gradually she gave up the privileges of her convalescence that she’d come to accept as her right.

The children had got holidays and were dragging the turf out to where the lorries could reach, with borrowed donkeys. Reegan was seldom able to be with them, it was getting too dangerous to neglect his police work as much as he used, for Quirke was watching, and he was tense with worry over the weather. If it rained the small shod hooves of the donkeys, the shod wheels of the carts would tear the skin of the pass to ribbons in an hour. They’d have to drag and struggle through the whole summer if there was rain, trying to patch the pass with rushes and heather and branches of sally, even then the donkeys often sinking. to their bellies in the mud and smashing shafts and harness in their panic, men having to come from other banks to loosen the tacklings and goad and lug them up while the frightened and guilty children tried to offer their useless help.

The weather did not break, but as it was Elizabeth saw they weren’t able for the strain of this work. She went down to them with hot food some evenings and stayed to help. They were so lonely and silent, these flat acres stretching to the rim of the sky, single men and small family groups working alone on their own banks, their voices carrying clear and far, the tiny purple bloom sprinkled on the dull heather, long acres of sedge as pale as wheat and taller, the stunted sally and birch trees rising bright as green flowers. Always wind, no matter how calm the day, and it grew chill early in the evenings.

She stayed and helped them as much as she was able, she hadn’t the strength to be of much use yet, the jagged bits of wood in the turf tore her hands; the dust and mould, hard and sharp as bits of flint, blew blinding and choking. She saw the children endure this and drive and beat the unwilling donkeys out and in without complaint, eager for the prizes Reegan brought, their young hearts hungry for praise: but it wasn’t right, she thought; and she protested to him. “Hard work never killed anybody,” Reegan argued. “I was doin’ almost a man’s work at their age and I never saw it do anybody any harm. Laziness and idleness was all I ever saw do harm.”

“They’re not able to stand it,” she said. “They’ll not grow natural. Let them have some jobs but they can’t stand more than they’re able for.”

“Turf isn’t heavy work,” he protested hotly. “If they had to dig or something, it’d be a different story.”

“It’s too heavy for their age: they’re at it from light to dark,” their difference almost rose to acrimony.

“They don’t mind,” he said. “They get oranges and lemonade and stuff. We have this contract and we have to fill it. It’ll only be for a little while, soon we’ll be gone to hell outa here and it’ll be all over.”

“That doesn’t matter, it’s not right, it’s not right,” she was roused enough to want to say but she didn’t say any-anything more. “These children were too young and what was all this mad striving for? What did it amount to or intend to achieve? And the difference a little leisure can make in the lives of people,” she thought despairingly to herself.

She was excited with resentment but there was nothing she could say or do. His greed for money to go free out of the police had grown to desperation, there was no use closing her eyes, it’d have to be accepted and lived with, but how it harmed everything, and there was nothing she could do. Now that he saw she wasn’t going to say anything more he wanted to justify himself.

“They don’t mind. I’m goin’ to give them a whole day in town when Duffy’s circus comes, they know that. And there’s no one else to do it. I can’t take any more chances with that bastardin’ Quirke all the time nosin’ about, and they can do as much at that as a man. They’ll be finished in not much over another week, if the rain keeps away, and they’ll have still the rest of their holidays before them, and I know it’ll not do them a pick of harm, Elizabeth.”

She nodded agreement and turned and put away the delf. He went. He said he’d be out on patrol and not back till late after ten and he’d try to get to them on the bog for an hour. She saw him fix his trousers with the bicycle clips and she gave him his raincoat folded to put on the carrier and then she waited for the blue bulk and the tyres on the gravel to go by the window.

She finished the washing and drying and sweeping, disturbed and the peace gone out of the day. She was right and he must surely believe he was right and it was all useless and futile. Though it was July still, she said to herself, and she mustn’t forget; the blackcurrants were falling with ripeness in the garden and she had yet to pick them, and if she didn’t there’d be none left by the birds soon. She could stew some this evening yet and the kitchen would be steaming and full with their scent. Their eyes would light and she’d ladle them some of the jam hot out of the saucepan before she filled the jars. That’s what she would do, she’d pick the blackcurrants, she should have picked them days ago; and now she was able to find a gallon and the torn straw sun-hat with new joy. She shut the scullery door and the windows before she went so that the hens wouldn’t be able to get in while she was away.

Outside Mullins was scuffling the gravel, and the moment she heard the noise of the hoe she knew she’d have to stand to talk. He was in his shirt-sleeves, no collar on the shirt that was always meant to be hidden under the tunic, the braces hauling the amazing waist of the trousers so tight up on his corporation that it tempted her to laugh. His tunic hung on the back of one of the yellow dayroom chairs that he’d placed in the shade of the wall, a newspaper on its seat, and a spade and little iron rake leaned against the wall beside it. The door and both windows of the dayroom were wide open and inside the open door of the lockup blocked the passage.

“Aw, Elizabeth,” he greeted. “I’m doin’ a bit of auld scufflin’, you can see!”

“It needs it too, I suppose,” she said, her eyes following the green scum of weed over the gravel.

“Quirke was complainin’ last week,” Mullins said. “‘We must take pride in the appearance of our station; if we don’t take pride in ourselves no one else will,’ he said; and very full the same pride’ll fill our bellies I don’t think.

“Though this station was the tidiest station in the country when I came here first, it won the prize,” he began. “There was a fella by the name of Joyce here then, a quiet sort of strange fella from Galway, and he used keep the place like the bee’s britches, just lovely. He was daft about flowers and strange as it may be dirty jokes, and a walkin’ encyclopedia on both he was; but you could get him interested in nothin’ else, he nearly drove Sergeant Jennings that was here at the time out of his mind before they shifted him to one of the penal stations up in Donegal.”

Mullins pointed out with his hoe where the beds of roses used to grow and the gladioli and the flowers he couldn’t name, where the lawn was kept mowed between, now wild with scutch grass and buttercups and daisies; and as Elizabeth tried to move towards the gate he continued, “That’s twenty-one years ago. I came here twenty-one years ago the 16th September last, twenty-one years too long here, just a month married then!”