John McGahern - The Barracks

“But I married you,” he protested. “It’s a man’s job to keep his wife, she has to keep the home.”

“I want to give you that money,” she said.

“No. That’s your money, not mine. You’ll want it to be able to buy things that you’ll need yourself. Nobody wants to depend entirely on somebody else. That money has nothing got to do with me.”

“I want you to take the money,” she didn’t try to argue. “I want you to take it now. If I need anything I’ll ask you for the money and you’ll give it to me.”

“You’d get it anyhow. I never refused you for anything, did I? But why?”

“Don’t mind the why, take it, for my sake. Of course you never refused me anything!”

“But why?” he puzzled as she left to go quickly upstairs to get the money out of the trunk and hurry down again.

“Why should you …” he was beginning an argument he’d thought of while she was away but she pressed him with the money.

“I’ll put it in an account for yourself. I’ll open a new account for you.”

“No, you must put it in your own.”

“But why?” he said again.

“No why, except I want you to, that is all.”

This useless argument threatened to drag on and on and not till he heard the children did he finally pocket the money.

Water dripped on the concrete from their soaked clothes, but they were excited. They showed proudly the perch they’d caught, hanging on a small branch that’d been passed through their dead gills and mouths, their scarlet tails and bellyfins shining against the grey blackstriped scales, lying against the sally leaves of the branch that were vivid with wet.

Elizabeth gave them dry clothes and when they’d changed they skinned some of the perch for their meal. Roasted brown they were sweet as trout, though full of small bones. Through the meal they talked excitedly of their evening’s catch in the rain.

Afterwards the long, dark evening was let rest in the kitchen. The rosary was said. Reegan lit his carbide bicycle lamp, put on cape and pull-ups to go on patrol, more to break the claustrophobia of the day indoors than to do his duty. They played draughts on the sill when he’d gone, and Elizabeth read. She was strangely content and at peace, she felt no guilt nor worry, and sure of this ease until at least this night’s sleep.

That broken August crept towards September, the dead sycamore leaves lying on the roof of the lavatory now on calm days, the length disappearing so noticeably out of the evenings that it was all the time in their conversations. Soon the children would be back at school, the summer ended.

There was little change. She had to go one Friday to the clinic in Athlone, as arranged by the Dublin cancer hospital, and there was no deterioration in her condition. It was her heart they feared most now, the strain of the operation and illness proving too much, and they told her to take things easy. She’d have to be careful, they said; but she paid no attention, how could she stay with them in this barracks and not be occupied. She’d go on as she was, as long as ever she was able. She’d no pain, there was no sign of the cancer stirring, and if her heart went she’d probably go out in a flash, without time for terror or thought.

Though often too she’d feel herself trapped on this quiet drift of days and grow a moment desperate. They were all the same, they would not change, the same day would follow the same day and day and day, nothing more would happen. On these days she was being drifted to her destruction, disease had started, and her life was almost ended.

She’d handle objects on the sideboard, lifting them and putting them back in the same place; or go to the window and rest her palms on the sill. The river was out there and the hill and the hedge of whitethorns half-way up; the great sycamore stood inside the netting-wire, a few dead leaves caught in its meshes. All she could do was stay in this kitchen and despair or go some place to break the claustrophobia with distraction. She could wash and comb and dress herself up, these simple acts had saved her many times before; and she could find some of the children and go to the well and shop. One of these evenings was extraordinarily vivid, a lovely evening both green and yellow together, held still between summer and autumn. She’d grown gradually desperate through the day and then made a last effort to live, and when she had washed and dressed herself she began to feel new and better, refreshed, the grime and sweat of the habitual day shed for ever, and desire and eagerness rose in her again.

She was alone in the kitchen and she went out to find Willie on the avenue. He was searching the laurels and talking to himself and she was delighted somehow, it was a habit of her own. He was glad to offer to come with her when she told him she was going to the well. His sisters had gone with Reegan to the woods for timber in the rowboat and he had remained behind because of some sulk or jealousy and probably tiring of his own company by this. He carried the enamel bucket for her, but she kept the shopping-bag, not to have her hands empty.

They turned right at the end of the avenue, away from the bridge, the river and lake gleaming behind till they reached the privet hedge before Glinn’s when the block of the barracks and trees about the archway shut it away. Glinn’s was a little general grocery place, far out on the road, four fresh shrubs of boxwood on the grass margin the far side, the pride of Mrs Glinn’s heart. She’d never trouble to cross the road to water them, but came just to her own doorway, and a basin of dish-water went flying across the road to the terror of every one passing, and there’d been more than a few ludicrous accidents with cyclists even since Elizabeth came.

She’d always an eye on the window or the door open so that no one could go by unnoticed. “A powerful evenin’ we have, Mrs Reegan,” she greeted Elizabeth from inside.

“It’s a lovely evenin’, Mrs Glinn,” Elizabeth said but didn’t stop. “Stuck-up bitch”, she thought she read in the old barrel-shaped woman’s reaction to her never stopping, but it could be so easily her own apprehensive imagination. Behind the forge the men were at pitch-and-toss, the pennies tossed from pocket-combs, a slight roll and thud when they fell on the tramped earth; she had to pass through and she flinched and tried to smile as they made respectful way and said, ‘Good evenin’, Mrs Reegan,” and she had to force her own quiet reply. The shock of new contact with people was getting more violent than ever, and yet she couldn’t stay alone. She saw the boy impatiently ahead of her now, ashamed before the men of this ageing woman who was not even his mother, and the men neither noticing nor caring. Sometimes the smile turned to a shudder, but it was best to go on and not notice, if you could possibly manage, and declare the whole mess a shocking comedy.

She left the shopping-bag and the cloth-bound notebook, in which the monthly accounts were written, at the shop and said she’d call for them on her way from the well.

The well was past the chapel, in the priest’s field where the presbytery stood blue and white for the Virgin Mary at the end of the long avenue of limes. Always it amused her, the great whitewashed front and the Virgin Mary door and windows, one man’s way of proclaiming a love. “ He turned from grisly saints, and martyrs hairy To the sweet portraits of the Virgin Mary ,” she remembered out of Don Juan, and began to laugh. She wondered if the priest could read those lines and still paint the house blue and white; probably he could, it’d only add strength of indignation to the brush. It was Halliday who’d first showed her the lines and given her the Byron.

“What’s the joke, Elizabeth?” the boy asked in a neglected tone and she’d quickly to come to earth.