John McGahern - The Barracks

“It’s strange you were never transferred in that length of time, John,” she said, wanting to get away but not wishing to appear too uninterested and silent, it was probably cowardice on her part she thought, for good God, how many versions of this same story had she heard before! She wished she could be alone and picking the blackcurrants.

“They must have forgotten about me up in the Depot,” Mullins laughed. “I must have got lost in some drawer. Would you believe I was never reprimanded in all that length of time, not to talk of being commended and me name appearin’ in the box in the Review . Only the pay comes the first of every month, if they forgot about that it’d be the last catastrophe!”

“I better pick some of the blackcurrants, not to let them all go with the birds,” she smiled her apology as she moved sideways to the gate, she was growing desperate to get away.

“A fine crop there’s there too and I’ve been watchin’ the same birds have the times of Riley,” he woke to some sense of her. “You’re lookin’ powerful yourself, mendin’ every day since you came home.”

“Thanks,” she smiled. “I feel better and it’s a lovely day.”

“And we’re as well make the most of it, while it’s in it,” he said as she moved away and his hoe went scuffing in the gravel again.

She was through the iron gate at the lavatory, onions spread to dry above on its flat roof, and down the concrete path to the rain-gauge. Every morning the b.o. had to lift the top off its copper casing and take and carefully pour the water that had collected in the bottle since the morning before into the delicate glass measure and note down its reading on the chart on the wall beside the phone. It had to be posted away to the Meteorological Station at the end of the month and a new chart appeared on the wall in its place. On such wastes life goes, it seemed; and at the rain-gauge she had to push her way up a furrow through the matted potato stalks to the blackcurrants, a crowd of sparrows scattering out as she came close, and she tramped down the wild meadow between the bushes before she started to pick.

The over-ripe fruit fell loosely to her fingers, beady black clusters underneath the coarse leaf, some hard and red or green low down in the bushes, where the wild grass had reached. She was shaded by the sycamores along the avenue, the smooth cool fruit touched her finger-tips and the rough leaves brushed the back of her hand and wrist, the saws were screaming through the timber across the lake and there was the muffled hammering of the stone-crusher in the quarry. She was able to lose herself in the slow picking, Mullins’s hoe scuffling on the gravel, and then it stopped. There was a clash of tools, the tramp of his heavy boots on concrete, the ponderous door of the lockup being bolted shut. They kept the tools there and the barrel of paraffin and tin of Jeyes Fluid for the lavatory and such stuff. Apart from drunks left to cool at Christmas it had only one prisoner since she came, the manager of a local creamery, a poor wretch who had embezzled the funds over a number of years to feed a passion for whiskey. She’d given him a meal in the kitchen, with Mullins who had several times sponged drink off the man sitting ridiculously by on guard, in an intense silence of embarrassment. Some cruel streak in Reegan must have tempted him to make the man Mullins’s prisoner.

The man never looked up as she poured the tea, his shoulders and arms contracted into as small a space as they could find, his head down close to the plate; and, she shivered to remember it in this usual day, the degradation of shame she had suffered for his shame.

The worst was as he went: he said, “God bless you, Mrs Reegan!” and started to cry. She was transfixed with horror where she stood and all she could do was stand and watch him being led away and listen to Mullins’s hoarse whispering, “You’ll have to pull yourself together, Jim Man. I feel as bad as you at havin’ to do this but I have to do it, it’s me duty, and there’s no use in whingin’ Jim Man. Don’t you understand that, Jim Man?” She could do nothing or say nothing but only stand and listen and watch him go. They put him in the lockup that night. The barrels and other lumber had been cleared, the floor scrubbed and a mattress and bedclothes fixed on the platform of bare boards four inches above the concrete. He slept for an hour, drugged with whiskey they’d got him from McDermott’s, but when he woke he began to beat on the wall. There was no light, the wind from the lake blew in the narrow window that had only a single steel bar in its centre, and the cell must have been damp from the scrubbing. Mullins rose to tell him to go back to sleep like a good man but it was no use, he beat louder, and called and cried. Mullins had to wake Reegan. It was soon clear that they’d have to take him out or listen to him through the night. They took him out and sat handcuffed to him to wait for morning. They had to escort him to Sligo in the morning.

Elizabeth had seen him go, the narrow green ribbon trailing from the silver that fettered his wrist to Mullins’s. She had to sign dockets later and Reegan must have got paid for the meals she’d given him. She had managed to avoid learning what happened at the trial and afterwards. She shivered now in the day. Why had she to remember? There was the steel singing of the saws across the lake and the hammering jaws of the stone-crusher in the quarry. Why had she to think, the round red sun was sinking into the west woods, the bright bottom of her gallon was covered with blackcurrants, a springing nettle stung her legs and she rubbed it with a dock leaf. Mullins sat on the yellow chair in front of the open dayroom window so that he’d hear the phone if he nodded to sleep over the newspaper. A cart with ropes on its floor crunched past, it was going for a load of hay to the river meadows that flooded in wet weather. Two men on bicycles passed in excited argument over the price of cattle, a woman with a full shopping-bag slung from the handlebars went by alone. This was the slow village evening: she was no longer in hospital, she could be sure, she was at home at last in what she loved and knew. She could hear the splash of fish, the whipcrack of a roach on water — how blood-red it’s fins were and gold the scales and totally unedible the white flesh full of bones — if she stood intent enough. Away towards the meadows and navigation signs at the mouth of the lake the cattle had waded out to where the water washed against their bellies, standing stock still in a daze except for an impatient shake of horns or a tail. A noise of a motor crept near. The square shape of a bread van crossed the bridge and jogged past towards the shops.

“That was a bread van, wasn’t it, Elizabeth?” she heard Mullins call.

“It was, a bread van,” she answered.

“Did you get readin’ the name, I just got a glimpse of its tail?”

“No. I never noticed.”

“I have the notion I spotted a B: it must be either Broder-ick’s or the Ballyshannon van!”

“It’ll be back,” she said. “They only do the circle of the village, they don’t go this way to Arigna and the pits.”

“No, it’ll be back,” he said. “We’ll have to watch this time. That’s the worst of dozin’ off, you’re always missin’ something. We’ll have to keep our eyes skinned this time.”

“We’ll want to keep awake so,” she said and laughed low to herself as she continued to pick. She heard Mullins’s whistle chain ring as he struggled into his tunic, and then she had warning of his feet come on the gravel and out the avenue. He stood to lean against the sycamore nearest to her and lit a cigarette.

“Strange how smokin’ soothes the nerves,” he said. Before she’s time to answer the bread van started up and they had to be silent to listen.