John McGahern - The Barracks

“Will you leave the door open when the mail car comes?” she inquired.

“I’ll give you a knock if Brennan doesn’t come to relieve me by then,” he said.

“That’ll be perfect,” she answered.

“The lads are on the bog today?” he made conversation.

“They are,” she said, and started to move on the gravel. “I intend makin’ some jam before they get home.”

“That’s what’ll be into their barrows,” he laughed as she was going, the hens gathering excitedly about, believing she carried feeding in the can.

She didn’t think once she was inside and she was happy, absorbed in preparing and washing the fruit, measuring sugar on the balance scales and going to the yellowed cookery book to make sure of the recipe. Soon the kitchen was full of the scent of the steaming jam, she stirred and tasted it to see if it was coming right, and then she had to scald the old jam jars and find rubber bands and cellophane. She’d often pause and smile to herself as she imagined how they’d shout when they’d smell the jam, untackling the donkeys without.

A light evening breeze had risen, blowing the curtains in the window open on the river. The sawmill had stopped, and the stone-crusher. Brennan must have relieved Mullins in the dayroom for he hadn’t opened the door and she’d heard the noise of what must have been the mail car go.

She went to the windows where the curtains blew, the light had slanted, making such violence on the water that she’d to shade her eyes to see the reeds along the shore, the red navigation barrels caught in a swaying blaze at the mouth of the lake and the soft rectangles of shadow behind.

In a sort of an awe she put her fingers to the vase of roses on the sill, she’d been given them by Mrs Casey yesterday, and lifted them to her face. How deep and strong the scent at first, and then the longer she held her face close how the scent faded till no fragrance came. She’d want to go away and have other loves and when she’d accidentally return that fragrance would be given back to her fresh as after rain.

That would be the wise way. Things had to be taken in small doses to be enjoyed, she knew; but how that mean of measurement degraded and cheapened all passion for life and for truth, and though it had to go through human hell, a total love was the only way she had of approaching towards the frightful fulfilment of being resonant with her situation, and this was her whole terror and longing. She could love too much, break the vase, cast herself on the ground, and be what she was, powerless and helpless, a broken thing; but her life with these others, their need and her own need, all their fear, drew her back into the activity of the day where they huddled in their frail and human love, together. And she had to watch the blackcurrants till they were stewed and pour the jam steaming into the glass jars that seemed made of light in the evening, and she knew she was waiting for them to come home and when they’d come there would be other things.

July went, the weather breaking at its end, a fine drizzle that spun slowly and endlessly down and wet you to the skin without you noticing. They didn’t go to the bog these days, the pass would be soft with rain and Reegan wasn’t worried; he had most of the turf sold and what remained on the banks wasn’t enough to matter. The borrowed donkeys nodded in the shelter of the sycamore and the hens slept on their feet beneath the heeled-up carts. The children helped Elizabeth inside or played draughts or push-halfpenny on the window-sills, where they could watch out at the rain, their knees on the warm rug of the sofa along the wall. Or they got tired of the house, put on old police raincoats, dug a canister of worms in the garden, and went down the meadows to fish for perch, the eelhook and cork and brown perch line rolled about the rods of hazel they carried on their shoulders.

Reegan sat mostly with the other policemen in the atmosphere of Casey’s, chain-smoking in the dayroom, doing whatever clerical work had to be done, and trying to shut his ears to the crazy arguments that went on non-stop. Sometimes, if he thought the children had gone and Elizabeth was alone, he’d come and they’d have tea together and he’d tell her about the money he’d made out of the turf and his plans for next year. He mentioned nothing about clashes with Quirke or when he hoped to get out of the police; and she suspected that he thought these things might worry her and she was grateful and didn’t try to pry beyond his care. She was happy, not since their first days did he show himself so aware of her, and there was something of the hour for the hour’s vitality about him that had always excited her. Whenever they kept their talk to the impersonal truck of their lives, not scraping down to the cores of personality, everything went smooth and easy, and that was almost always now.

He was specially happy if she found him something to mend on these wet days in the kitchen, a saucepan that wanted soldering or a chair with a broken leg. What he hated most was stillness. He’d complain at first: “These children’ll have to learn that they can’t be rockin’ back on these chairs; that’s how the back goes and the legs,” but it was complaining for the pleasure of complaining and to throw an extra light of importance on the job he had in hand. She’d watch him as he worked and share it when he’d want something held steady. When she was at peace she loved the kitchen full of the noisy life of his hammering, seeing the metal gleam of the nails between his teeth, and wanting to touch the smoothness of the new wood when it was planed. Sometimes she’d think how lucky she was to have found Reegan, to be married to him and not to Halliday, where she and he would drive each other crazy with the weight and desperation of their consciousness.

Often he hummed as he worked, the lovely Danny Boy , his strange favourite. Then, sensing her about, he’d look up and find her sunk in reflection and call, “A penny for them, Elizabeth!”

“They’re not worth that,” she’d wake to laugh, but she’d have stirred his anxiety — was she getting ill again? “Do you feel well, Elizabeth,” he’d probe.

“Yes. Why? I just get lost in a daze sometimes, start to think, and then find myself drifting into an old dream. It’s just a foolish habit.”

“Do you not think you’re takin’ too much on yourself, all the work of the house, so soon out of hospital. Do you not think you’d be better to take it easy for a while? We made good money outa the turf and I was thinkin’ if you took a week or two at the seaside, if you went to Strandhill? The Caseys’ll be goin’ in another week and they’d be company.”

She smiled. He had preferred to ignore her explanation. She’d been at Southend and Margate and Brighton. Excursion days, never any place else. To go with the Caseys to Strandhill or any other place would be an absolute impossibility, she knew.

“Would you go yourself?” she asked because she knew he would not.

“What would I be doin’ at the seaside?” he laughed, trying to turn it into a joke. “Wouldn’t I be a nice cut walkin’ round with Casey and me hands in me pockets?”

“What would I be doin’ there either?”

“It’d rest you and there’d be the sea air.”

“No, it’d be impossible,” she laughed, and he joined her.

Casey alone went from the barracks, his love of ease betraying him for once with what was but its shade; for, though he went religiously for his fortnight each year and talked about it for weeks, it had become another barrack joke; they all knew that it was a grim fourteen days, suffering the loss of each of his home comforts, longing for the day that’d allow him home, his burden lightened if he could find another policeman, or someone from Dublin who’d talk about the trams, staying in Mrs O’Dwyer’s guest house. The fortnight was a grim duty which he felt in some way that he owed himself. Even to Reegan now the notion of Elizabeth involved in this annual crucifixion was ludicrous.