John McGahern - The Barracks

Could she plan till then? It’d be too full of painful joy, and in a few minutes she’d have to make an effort to rise out of this chair. September was too far away, it was unreal, she had only dreamt it in the Septembers she remembered. And she had to live a day at a time, a day between waking and sleeping, not even days, in the passing moments that enclosed her life.

She woke, the gaze that had been directed inwards in rich dream she turned outwards, to wake on the surface of observance, observing Reegan. He too could be excited by September but his September was not hers. Money in the bank, smashing Quirke and going free out of the police to start a new life — that was his September. Starting a new life at fifty, declaring thirty years a stupid waste, and beginning again, at fifty; it had something of greatness, it made rubbish out of the passage of time, it pissed at futility, it took no cognizance of death. It was the spirit of life declaring itself in defiance of everything, and it sent a thrill of excitement to the marrow of her bones, but she wasn’t able to rise and affirm it with her own life. She was excited, she marvelled, but she couldn’t understand. How do his mind and body work that he is able to be so; how is he able to go so violently on and on and on? She watched his face, the lines of its years and deaths and grey streaks in his hair, the large hands streaked with veins, and the uniform with silver buttons and badges and the three silver stripes on the sleeve that so many had worn and were wearing and would wear, and she wanted to break down and cry. She had loved him, still loved him, and would love him till she died, but how was she to tell him so? She hadn’t the beauty and attractions left that can turn the simplest gestures of a young girl into meaning, and she’d no words or her words were not his words. She knew nothing about him, just things she’d observed and what were they; as she’d observed things about herself and still knew nothing, but all grew into the one desire to love and to cause no living thing pain.

“It doesn’t matter much whether we go a little before or after September, only the main thing is that we’re goin’,” Reegan was saying. “And Superintendent John James Quirke is guaranteed one or two exciting days before then or my name’s not Reegan. We’ll see who’ll come out on top. We’ll see who’ll come out on top then, Elizabeth!”

With an effort she rose out of the chair, swayed for a moment as if she half expected to be struck, and smiled as she managed to move towards the spool of blue thread on the sewing-machine. Her collapse would come at its own choosing.

She could run now, throw herself on the netting-wire, and call out across the lake to the woods where the saws still sung, “Oh, answer me. Will Something answer me?” and she’d be met with echoes and real sounds of the saws and birds, cloud shadow on corrugations the wind had made on the water, and silence — the silence of the sky and lake and wood and people going about their lives. And if she was heard it could be only by people and what could they do? She’d look silly or gone crazy, she’d have broken the rules. She could only cause painful concern to those involved with her and wring ridicule and laughter from those who were not, the thing that runs counter to the fabricated structure of safe passions must be slaughtered out of its existence.

“We’ll see then, we’ll see what’ll happen then,” Reegan’s excited words came, able to see past the danger of the living moment and not so far as the moment of his death; absorbed by how the dice would fall; and that was the way to be, that was the way to be safe.

“What does it matter about Quirke? He has his own cares, let him go his own way, what does it matter whether he’s right or wrong as long as you can go your own way in peace,” she wanted to say but she knew the answer she’d get. “So nothing matters. So everybody’s the same. But we’re not dead yet bejasus! We’re not altogether in that state yet,” and he was right in his own way. People didn’t want peace but shouting and activity and excitement, that was life; fullness of life for them was not thought, that was to be free and lonely and to die, life was ceaseless activity. Peace was not life, it was death.

“Will you be going to the court tomorrow? It’s the District Court day, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’ll want to get the things ready if you are.”

“Aye — I’m goin’; me and Casey, that’s all, but don’t put yourself to too much bother.”

She knew the things she had to do: they never varied; and in the morning there’d be the shining of his boots and baton sheath, the scrupulous shining of the silver buttons and badges and whistle chain as on every other court morning.

The year moved forward, cold with frost, the fields firm enough to carry the ploughing tractors. Ash Wednesday, a cold white morning, all the villagers at Mass and the rails, to be signed with the Cross on their lives to be broken, all sinners and needing the grace of God to be saved, the cross thumbed by the priest on their foreheads with the ashes of their mortality. The organ was silent in the organ loft; those who did not get dispensed from the fast could have only one full meal in the day; the yew branches would be blessed Palm Sunday and left in a bath-tub outside the church for the people to take away; and the beautiful, beautiful ceremonies of Holy Week.

On Wednesday and Friday evenings at six they had Lenten Devotions: the rosary and Benediction on Wednesdays; the Stations of the Cross that she loved, on Fridays.

The priest with the small black prayer book, in black soutane and white surplice, the altar-boys in scarlet and white, their breaths blowing like cigarette-smoke in the light of the candles they carried, the candle-flames flickering yellow before their young faces. At every one of the fourteen stations from Pilate to the tomb the priest’s voice ringing: We adore thee, O Christ, and praise thee , as he genuflects in the stillness, and the self-conscious whispers of the small congregation of villagers scattering from beneath the gallery as their feet shuffle on the flagstones, Because by Thy holy Cross Thou has redeemed the world .

Christ on the road to Calvary, she on the same road; both in sorrow and in ecstasy; He to save her in Him, she to save herself in Him — both to be joined for ever in Oneness. She’d gone to these devotions all her life, she’d only once fallen away, some months of bitterness in London. She saw her own life declared in them and made known, the unendurable pettiness and degradation of her own fallings raised to dignity and meaning in Christ’s passion; and always the ecstasy of individual memories breaking like a blood-vessel, elevated out of the accidental moment of their happening, and reflected eternally in the mirror of this way. Though, at the fourteenth station, the body was laid in the tomb, it held the seeds and promise of its resurrection, when the door of the tomb would be thrown back and He who was risen would appear in great light, glorious and triumphant. And if the Resurrection and still more the Ascension seemed shadowy and unreal compared to the way to Calvary, it might be because she could not know them with her own life, on the cross of her life she had to achieve her goal, and what came after was shut away from her eyes. She could only smile and Crucifixion and Resurrection ended in this smiling. As a child she’d been given to believe that the sun danced in the sky Easter Sunday morning, and she’d wept the day she saw that it simply shone or was hidden by cloud as on other mornings. The monstrous faiths of childhood got all broken down to the horrible wonder of this smiling.

She was at the end of her tether, she beat off two attacks in the next week, dragging herself to a chair; but the morning came that she failed to rise out of bed. The alarm had torn away the thin veils of her sleep as on other mornings and with the imbedded force of habit she went to reach across the shape of bedclothes that was Reegan to stop its clattering dance on the table, but she fell back without reaching it, as if stricken. Reegan grunted awake, and stopped it with one impatient movement of his arm. He seldom had to stop it and, sensing the break of habit, searched for something wrong. Elizabeth usually stopped the clock without it waking him. She was at his side: could it be that for once she was in heavy sleep, or was something wrong! As if to meet his thoughts he heard her say, “I tried to stop it but I’m not well,” between gasps. He raised himself on his elbow; one look was enough to tell him she wasn’t well, he thought immediately of the cancer, they had discovered no cure for cancer yet.