John McGahern - The Barracks

“God bless all here,” he greeted.

“And you too, Ned,” they returned.

Reegan was glad of the disturbance. Minutes ago he’d wanted nothing but to be left alone, but he was more than glad by this to be disturbed out of broodings that were becoming more lonely and desperate. He pulled his own chair to one side, eager to make room at the fire.

“Don’t trouble to move yourself, Sergeant,” Casey assured, “I’ll work me way in all right, don’t you worry. I just thought that if I carted you up the book it’d save you the trouble of comin’ down.”

“That’s powerful,” Reegan praised. “I’d be down long ago only I couldn’t tear meself away from the fire here.”

“And small blame to you! The devil himself wouldn’t venture down to that joint on a night like this. I stuffed a few auld coats against the butt of the door but the draughts still go creepin’ up the legs of yer britches like wet rats.

“God’s truth,” he continued, “I was gettin’ the willies down there on me own: lukin’ at the same bloody wonders all the evenin’ in the fire and expectin’ to be lifted outa me standin’ at any minute be the phone!”

Then suddenly he felt he was complaining too much about himself and stopped and tried to turn the conversation with all the awkwardness of over-consciousness.

“And tell me, did you meet anything strange or startlin’ on your travels, Sergeant?”

“Aye!” Reegan tried to joke. “I met something all right — whether you can call it strange or startlin’ or not is another matter.”

He was attempting a levity he didn’t feel, it left greater feeling of anger and frustration behind it than violent speech.

“What did you meet with, Sergeant?”

“Did you ever hear of His Imperial Majesty, John James Quirke? Did you?”

“Jay,” Casey exclaimed in real amazement. “You never met the Super, did you? What was takin’ him out on an evenin’ like this?”

Reegan began to recount the clash; and it had become more extravagant, more comic and vicious since the first telling. When he finished he shouted, “That shuk him, believe me! That’s what tuk the wind outa his sails!” and as he shouted he tried to catch Casey’s face unaware, trying to read into his mind.

“Bejay, Sergeant, but he’ll have it in for us from this on. He’ll do nothing but wait his chance. You can sit on that for certain comfort. As sure as there’s a foot on a duck, Sergeant!”

“But what do I care? Why should I care about the bastard?” Reegan ground back.

Elizabeth drifted from between them. She gathered the sagging fire together and heaped on fresh wood. The blast of heat on her face made her sway with sleep. She felt how ill she was — and still Reegan’s voice stabbed into the quiet of the big barrack kitchen, harsh with mockery and violence.

She lifted the kettle and filled it from the bucket of spring water on the scullery table, cold and damp there, the table littered with cabbage leaves and the peelings of turnips that she’d been too tired to tidy away; if anything, the rain drummed more heavily on the low roof — sometimes it seemed as if it might never cease, the way it beat down in these western nights. She replaced the old raincoat of the children’s against the bottom of the door as she came in and lowered the kettle so that it hung full in the flames.

Soon it would start to murmur over the blazing fire, then break into a steady hum, as if into song. She saw the lamplight, so softly golden on the dark blinds that were drawn against the night. And she could have cried out at Reegan for some peace.

Were their days not sufficiently difficult to keep in order as they were without calling in disaster? Quirke had the heavy hand of authority behind him and Reegan could only ruin himself. And if he got the sack! What then? What then?

Her woman’s days had no need of change. They were full and too busy, wanting nothing but to be loved. There was the shrill alarm clock at eight in the barracks morning and the raking of the ashes over the living coals close to midnight: between these two instants, as between tides, came the retreating nights of renewal and the chores of the days on which her strength was spent again, one always unfinished and two more eternally waiting, yet so colourless and small that only on a reel of film projected slowly could they be separated and named; and as no one noticed them they were never praised.

She cleared her throat as she stooped over the fire, reached for the hankie in the fold of her sleeve. It wasn’t there. She spat softly, without thinking. The mucus hissed against the hot ashes. She shuddered as a tiny mushroom of the pale timber ash drifted up. How she’d always hated Reegan’s spitting on the floor, then trying to rub it into the cement with a drag of his boot! Now she was no better! And to plague her, a vision of herself in London before the war flashed on her mind, a spring Sunday in London, when the light is grey and gentle as anything on earth. She had come out the great black hospital gates, a red tartan scarf thrown back on her shoulder; and turned right, up the marvellous width of Whitechapel Road, away from the crowds milling into the Lane, for it was the morning. Now she was spitting like any common slut in a barrack kitchen. It was with the abjection of a beaten animal that she lifted her knitting and sat down close to Casey and the three children, who had finished their exercises and come into the circle about the fire.

Reegan sat at the table, filling his report into the Patrol Book. They were silent as he wrote till Casey asked the children:

“Ye’re finished the auld lessons?”

“All’s finished,” they told him quietly.

“And ye have them all off?”

“Aye.”

“Well, that’s the way to be. Be able to puzzle the schoolmaster.”

“I wouldn’t be sure they’re that well known,” said Elizabeth.

“Well, you’ll get nothin’ without the learnin’ these days. Pass the exams. That’s what gets people on. That and swindlin’. I didn’t do much of either meself. More’s the pity. And signs are on it!”

They laughed at Casey’s rueful grin. He brought a wonderful ease with him sometimes into the house, the black hands of the clock would take wings. They loved to sit with him at the fire, listening to the talk, feeling the marvellous minutes melt like sweetness in the mouth for ever.

Reegan wrote quickly at the table, to the well-practised formula, and only when he came to describe the weather had he to pause. He wasn’t sure of the wind’s direction. He remembered catching his breath at the way it clawed at his face and chest as he turned downhill from Ardcare; and then a mile farther on of the same straight road it came behind him, making the bicycle shift like a boat in full sail, its course warped in some way by the solid beech trees behind the demesne wall.

“What way is the wind blowin’, Ned? Is it from the south-west?”

“About that,” Casey pondered to answer. “It was comin’ from Moran’s Bay when I was out for the turf. It seems about the only direction it knows how to blow from,” he added with a dry laugh.

Reegan was satisfied and turned back to finish his report but the wind’s direction continued to amuse Casey.

“Where does the south-west wind come from, William Reegan?” he asked in the tones of a pompous schoolmaster.

“From the Atlantic Ocean,” Willie entered into the game, all the children’s faces, and even Elizabeth’s bright at the clown’s face Casey had on for the performance.

“Very good, young Reegan! And can you tell me now what it gathers on its long journey across the oceans?”

“It gathers moisture,” Willie choked.

“Very right, my boy! I see you are one boy who comes to school to learn something other than villainy and rascality. And then as I have repeated day-in, day-out, while the hairs of me head turned grey, it strikes against the mountains, rises to a great height, and pisses down on the poor unfortunates who earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brows in this holy, catholic, and apostolic country of Ireland.”