John McGahern - The Barracks

She lay quiet there. The weight of bedclothes, the weight of the boards of the ceiling on her eyes, the weights hanging from her body removed any hope she might have that she’d recover in a few minutes and be able to rise. She told Reegan that she must have got a stupid ’flu or something, she didn’t feel able to get up. She heard him say he’d ring the doctor, immediately. She didn’t care, it didn’t concern her. She didn’t care what he did. The day was rocking gently in the room, the brass bells at the foot of the bed shone like swinging lamps. She heard Reegan pull on his clothes, and he left the door open as he went.

He woke Brennan, asleep on the iron bed under the phone, who stirred to ask vaguely out of his waking, “Is there something wrong? Is there something wrong, Sergeant?”

“Don’t get up, don’t move yourself. This woman isn’t well and I just want to ring the doctor,” and before Brennan could ask more questions Reegan was talking with whoever was on the Exchange. When he was put through to the doctor’s house it was the wife who took the call.

The doctor didn’t come till ten that day; and late in the evening the priest arrived at the house, for the first time since she had come from hospital.

They rose from their knees about the sick-bed, the pairs of beads in their hands, and the children went to Elizabeth to wish her good night, the girls with their lips, a touch of fingers from the boy; and then they went to Reegan, who stayed in the room after they’d gone.

“Do you know what I think, Elizabeth? We should get a nurse, you’re four weeks down now, and with a nurse we’d have you on yer feet in no time. What do you think, Elizabeth?” Reegan suggested in fumbling, uneasy tones as the vibrations of their feet descending the stairs shivered through the floor boards and furniture.

“What? How do you mean?” she asked. She jerked out of her drowsiness where the prayers and the touch of fresh lips and fingers lingered in confusion in her mind. The question took her unawares, she had been expecting some remark about the great length that was coming into these April evenings to which she’d add her quiet assent. “What? How do you mean?” she asked and there was panic in the voice.

“I thought it might be better to get a nurse. With a nurse you’d be out of bed far quicker,” he said and she was wide awake now. Did he not realize that she was dying? Did they not all realize?

“Is there need?” she answered excitedly. “I don’t see any need.”

“Of course there’s need! There’s need for you to get better,” he protested.

“There’s need for me to get better?”

“Of course there’s need! What else is there need for, Elizabeth?”

“There’s need for me to get better,” she puzzled, and it brought such horrible sweet hope.

“It’d cost money, too much money,” she said.

“We’re not paupers,” he answered. “The quicker you get the nurse the quicker you’ll be out and about again and the expense will be over quicker, not draggin’ on. With the nurse and the good weather comin’ you’ll be on your feet in no time.”

Jesus Christ, she thought; that was rimming it — the good weather! She wanted to laugh hysterically. The good weather, that was rich. All the old tricks were being played back. It was always sunshine and summer for hope, never the lorry loads of salt and sand being shovelled on the slush of the street.

Jesus, how often she herself had comforted the doomed poor bitches in the ward, “No, you’re not that bad, Mrs Ashby; and you mustn’t let yourself get depressed. Things take time. With the new treatment Dr Granville is getting you and the summer around the corner you’ll be home before you know.”

She’d see it clutched at, as they clutched at every other floating straw. Even when the bedclothes were lightened, and bodies lay clammy under a single sheet, the reflected glitter from the cars crawling between the stunted plane trees below in Whitechapel Road hurting the eyes at the windows and there could be no more hope in that summer, how their single passion used seek and find other omens to clutch. She’d noticed very little of the irony of understanding in any eyes.

Now it was her turn. She was being played the same tricks back, and she found she wanted to live in the face of all adversity, she found herself wanting to clutch at anything at all, even these old and shabby omens of good and ill. And neither the cancer nor her failing heart, which ever would destroy her the first, knew anything of the change in days or in flowers.

“You know I’ll not get better,” she tried to reason with Reegan or herself, quietly.

“Not if you go on talkin’ like that,” he remonstrated, blustery and assertive and surely afraid, as somebody trying to stand on his dignity, trying to stand on anything that doesn’t exist unless it’s allowed to in the other mind.

“Things take time,” he continued. “Miracles don’t happen in a day.”

She saw he was shaken, his passion of assertion theatrical. He was afraid to face up, as she was. He’d refuse to understand. It was as if he was afraid that if he shared with her the knowledge of her approaching death he’d be forced in some way to share her dying too. No one at all would help her. She’d have to go on as she had lived, alone. She’d have to pretend to believe she was going to get well, whether she did or didn’t, and the worst was that it happened to be the one thing in the world she wanted to believe.

“I don’t think there’s need for a nurse full time. Mrs Lennon might come for a few hours, it’d take the weight of the work off Mrs Casey, I often feel guilty about how much she’s doing for us.”

“She wants to do it,” Reegan said. “When I talked about employin’ some one she was insulted.”

His face was quiet, she saw. What he said she knew was true, she’d never seen the younger woman so happy before, but it’s more often harder to accept than to give.

“I thought we might get some one full time, to stop here in the house with you. Mrs Lennon is only the village nurse. She’d be only able to come for a few hours at a time.”

“It’d be enough,” she said.

“Are you sure? For you must have whatever’s needed to get you on yer feet.”

“I’m sure, quite sure,” she said. She wanted her own thoughts, even if they’d bring no peace, at least they’d be a change.

“We’ll talk to the doctor so tomorrow. We’ll see what he says,” he decided.

“That’ll be best. And open the window a little before you go, the fire all day in the room has it stuffy.”

The old pulleys squealed as he lowered the window and the curtains started to sway in the draught of night air.

“Is that enough?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You’ll have to get better soon, Elizabeth,” he stooped to kiss her. “You can’t just go away on us like that. Good night, Elizabeth.”

“Good night,” she smiled.

“I have to do an auld late patrol. Try to be asleep when I get back,” he said as he left, his feet already on the stairs, and she’d see the uniformed shoulders pass down, between the rungs of the stair railing. The door was always open, it was her wish, more than once in the last weeks she believed that open door had saved her from madness. That she could see out on the landing and stairs left her the illusion or sense that she was still connected with the living, and it was something that she couldn’t live without.

“Try and be asleep when I get back,” murmured in her mind when she was alone, a bitter joke. Perhaps the moon would rise, flood the room with far stronger light than this low night light, the little green glass oil-lamp on the table.