John McGahern - The Barracks

“It’s moved from McDermott’s to Murphy’s,” he said. “Believe me that auld dry stick didn’t keep them long talkin’. ‘Here’s yer order and yer money, give me me bread and go in the name of Our Lord and don’t disturb me further, me good man,’” he mimicked viciously. “They’ll not get away so handy from Murphy’s,” he continued to comment, “Big Mick’ll want to know what happened in every dance-hall in the country. Oh, the big fat lazy bastard! Nothin’ troubles him but football and women, hot curiosity and no coolin’ experience. The best of rump-steak from the town and nothin’ to do but plank his fat arse all day on the counter,” and then he paused and said out of a moment’s reflection, “Isn’t the smell of fresh loaves a powerful smell, Elizabeth?”

“Yes,” she spoke out of the same mood. “When I used pass the big bakeries in London or see a van with its doors open outside a shop I used to get sick for home. I’d see a van outside the shop at the Chapel and a bread rake thrown on top of the loaves on the shelves, there’s no smell so fresh.”

Mullins spoke and after what seemed an age of conversation in the quiet day the van moved again.

“What did I tell you, Elizabeth; they were kept all that length in the shop,” Mullins pricked immediately to attention, returning to his former tone. “That lazy auld bollocks has enough information to keep his swamp of a mind employed for another while. Some of the bread-van men and the travellers’d want to be sexual encyclopedias to satisfy some of the people in this village.”

“It’s never a full-time occupation,” Elizabeth said, not able to resist, afraid when she’d said the words that’d tempt him into a monotone of sex for the evening.

“No, that’s the good truth anyhow,” he laughed, “but when it’s confined to talkin’ and imaginin’ it can be full-time till the final whistle blows.”

The van had stopped, it would be for the last time.

“They’ll not stay long with that hape of a Glinn bitch with her Jasus Christ tonight and would you be tellin’ me that now in her man’s voice and her legs spread far enough apart to drive a fair-sized tractor through.”

“You’re very hard on the people, John,” Elizabeth accused, though amused to soreness by this time.

“It’s easy for you to talk, Elizabeth; you never mix with them; you always keep yourself apart. But if you were fightin’ and agreein’ with them for more than twenty years, till you can’t have any more respect for yourself than you have for them, you might have evidence enough to change your mind,” he defended, taking the accusation seriously.

She nodded: the conversation was beginning to disturb and pain her; she wished he’d soon decide to go away.

The bread-van’s motor started to life for the last time in the evening and Mullins stiffened as it came in sight to read, “Broderick’s — I knew I saw a capital b, Β for Bread and Β for Broderick’s, Broderick’s from Athlone: Mullingar, Athlone and Kinnegad as the Geography used to say.”

They watched it cross the bridge, dust rising and some loose stones cracking out from the tyres, and Mullins said, “Those loose stones would tear any tyre to pieces. I got two punctures on me back wheel this week. Do you know where I’d like to be now?” he asked when the silence fell.

“Where?” she answered desperately.

“In one of those pubs along the Liffey — the White Horse or the Scotch House — and a nice pint of stout in me fist. Isn’t it strange that Dublin’s the only place in the country that you can get a nice pint of stout, they say it’s the Liffey gives it its flavour!”

“’Tis strange,” she nodded but wished the phone’d call him or he’d take it into his head to go. He was silent now against the sycamore trunk, his heavy red face sunk in reflection as she continued with the picking, the can more than half-full; and she was disturbed by how even his presence grated on her in the silence.

“Do you ever think, Elizabeth, that gettin’ married and havin’ a steady job takes a lot of the ginger outa life,” he soon broke that silence. “There’s not the same adventure at all any more! It’s all more or less settled and the only information missin’ for the auld nameplate is the age!”

She lifted her face: who’d ever think Mullins of the barrack arguments had such dangerous notions running through his head, she thought quickly. She wished she could be honest and giving, that she could strip her own heart bare in answer, for his words were but the cry of a fumbling loneliness, but the only answer she could make was to join his seeking with her own; and she knew she neither could nor would, she’d be deliberately dishonest, smiling and presenting him with the mirage of flattery that’d more than satisfy him. To answer truly could only lead to compassion or the discovery of each other’s helplessness and squalor, and the one possible way to go that way was through the door of love, it would probably end the same, but at least it’d be with the heart and not in the cold blood of boredom.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You’d want to be the two things together to compare them, both married and single at once, and none of us can manage that.”

“That’s perfectly right, Elizabeth,” he agreed. “You’re the only person anyone can have a real talk with about here. You’re the only one who understands anything.”

“Don’t be foolish!” she laughed.

“That’s the God’s truth,” he said and moved away from the trunk. “And I suppose I’d be better to be gettin’ back to base and let you go on with the pickin’.”

“It’s almost finished, John,” she said and watched the back of his blue uniform go, heard his feet stir the gravel when he passed through the gate. She had thought she’d never get rid of him and now that he was gone she felt guilty. She felt such sympathy for people and yet she denied them — but this thinking only made bad worse. She wished she was blind as they.

“Why had he to come to disturb her anyhow?”

She was just out of hospital, it was the summertime, the pain of the clash with Reegan had almost faded when he arrived. Could he not leave her easy to enjoy the garden and the day? The pure shining blackness of the clusters of currants stared at her out of the leaves, the cold grasses touched her legs; the light was making a marvel out of the great rough rhubarb leaves over by the netting-wire, speckled with birds’ droppings; the long ridges of potato stalks were all about her, tiny blossoms riding above the leaves and butterflies tossing. Could he not leave her alone to these? She heard him pottering about in the dayroom, then come out again to sit on the yellow chair in the shade, and later she heard him hum over and over to himself:

Said the Bishop of old Killaloe,

“I am bored, I have nothing to do.”

So he climbed on his steeple

An’ pissed on his people,

Singing tooralaye — ooralaye — oo .

She smiled, she hadn’t heard it before, she wondered was the Limerick his own. The singing grew louder and more provocative. She heard the words clearly. Her can was full. She pushed her way through the green stalks to the rain-gauge. He was humming and beating time on the gravel with a stick but as soon as he saw her come he stopped.

“I see you’re singin’,” she said.

“Takin’ to cultivatin’ me artistic talents in me auld age,” he mocked, his phrases echoing the gossip columns in the newspapers, and then he said fiercely, “Hangin’ b.o. about this joint’d drive a man to anything!”

“It’ll soon be time for the tea.”

“That itself,” he muttered but half-grinning.