John McGahern - The Barracks

There was a stifled roar of laughter as Reegan wrote, frowning to keep his concentration.

“You’re a terrible man, Ned,” chaffed Elizabeth.

“But it’s the God’s truth!” he protested. “You know what Cromwell said: Get roasted alive in hell or drownded and perished in Connaught.”

Naturally timid, the little comic success seemed to release him from the burden of himself. Everything was relaxed and easy as Reegan closed the Patrol Book and pulled his chair in among them, but even so Casey shirked asking for Una to spend the night with his wife, and he’d have to ask soon or it would be too late. Reegan could be moody and strange. At any time he might resent this constant call on Una. A refusal could shatter Casey’s ease of mind for the whole night. His nervous fear came out in the painfully roundabout, “The Missus was wonderin’ if it’d be all right for Una to come up with me when I’m goin’ up for the bit of supper, for to stop the night.”

Tonight he had no cause for fear.

“Shure she can go. But that’s the woman’s territory. Whatever she says,” deferred Reegan.

Elizabeth had no real say, though this social deference pleased her so, and she tried to catch Reegan’s eyes with a smile of gratefulness as she assented, “She can, of course. Her nightdress is ready there in the press.”

Una couldn’t conceal her delight, though she tried. Nor could Sheila conceal her terror of the loneliness in the cold room. Both tried to suppress any expression of their feelings. They knew their places. They were simply pawns. And this world of their father and Casey and Elizabeth was as unknowable to them as the intolerable world of God is to the grown, if they have not dulled their sense of the mystery of life with the business or distractions of the day and the hour. All the two black-haired girls could do was sit there and wait, coming and going as they were willed.

“I don’t like troublin’ you all the time like this,” Casey shuffled.

Elizabeth stopped it. “Don’t be talkin’ foolish. Una thinks she can’t get up half quick enough. Isn’t that right, Una?”

The dark child smiled and blushed. No more.

“We don’t know what we’d do only for Una. We’d be lost. That woman of mine would go off her head if she had to stop all night in that house on her own.”

“And no one would blame her,” Elizabeth managed to end.

Casey’s embarrassment was over. He was as happy as he could be. He looked at the clock and it was already nine. He had nothing more to do before he slept, nothing but the repetitions that had become more than his nature. He’d bring Una with him when he went for his supper; kiss his wife at the door when he left again for the barracks a half-hour later: she’d stand with her hand on the edge of the door until she had heard the white gate that led on to the avenue clang behind him, it was her habit. Then the rest of the night was plain sailing: bring down the mattress and blankets from upstairs and make up his bed beneath the phone, lock the door, put the key on the sill, take out his beads to say a decade of the rosary with his few night prayers, set the alarm for the morning, rake the fire, turn down the oil lamp on the wall before he got into bed. He was at least master of these repetitions, they had no power to disturb him, he knew them in his blood; and they ran there like a drug.

“What about a game of cards? It’s ages since we had a game,” he said, now that he was no longer troubled. A pack of cards was found behind a statue of St Therese on the sideboard, the folding card-table fixed in the centre of the hearth. The cards were dealt and played. Elizabeth kept the scores on the inside of a torn Gold Flake packet. There was no tension in the play, no stakes, only the children excited as the night was cheated and hurried to its mid-hour.

From the outside the heavy porch door was shouldered open, small stones wedged beneath its bottom grinding on the concrete, the knocker clattering through the barracks. Steps lingered about the door of the dayroom before they came up the hall. They held their hands instinctively upright to listen.

“That’s Jim’s steps for sure,” Casey said before Brennan knocked and entered.

He was small for a policeman, the bare five feet nine of the regulations, his face thin, and the bones standing out. He looked overcome in the heavy woollen greatcoat.

“A terrible night that’s in it,” he said.

“A terrible night.”

The voices echoed him, more or less in unison, the hoarse chant of a prayer.

“I saw the light turned low in the dayroom. I was thinkin’ ye’d all be here.”

And he left his flashlamp down on the window-sill, his greatcoat and cap on the pedal sewing-machine just beneath. There was no further need of the cards. They were raked up and the green table lifted out.

“You let no grass grow under yer feet tonight, Jim?” he was asked, for it wasn’t yet ten, and it was always later than ten when the policemen came to make their reports and sign themselves out for the night.

“I was makin’ a bird cradle all the evenin’ with the lads,” he explained. “We just managed to make it a minute ago there. So I thought it might be as well to face out for here at wance and be finished with it for the night.”

They could see him on his knees in the kitchen of their rooms across the river, most of his eight children gathered round, building the cradle out of sallies and the cement coloured rods of elder. When the snow came they’d set it on the street. And all through the hard weather they’d have cold thrushes and blackbirds.

“We got a great strong cradle med,” he added. “None better in Ireland!”

The others smiled, Brennan’s intense pride in everything that came into his possession was a barrack joke, it was artless as a child’s.

“The best woman in Ireland to get a bargain,” he’d say when his wife came from town on a shopping Saturday; and when he came home himself with the little yellowed bundle of Early York in spring, the plants still knotted in their ragged belt of straw, he had already, “A hundred of the best heads of cabbage in Ireland. Without question or doubt!”

“And how is Mrs Brennan’s cold?” asked Elizabeth quietly.

“She’s still coughin’ away. A fierce rasp in her chest. But nothin’ll get that woman of mine to stay up in bed,” he complained proudly.

“She’d be wiser to stop. Is she takin’ anything for it?”

“She rubs on a bit of Vick at night. That’s all I ever see her do. She always says a cauld has to run its course.”

“The bed’s the only man,” advised Casey. “It’s the only place you can keep your temperature even. She needn’t think that she can’t be done without — the very best of us can be done without. So she’s as well to take it aisy. Time and tide, they say, waits for no man, nor woman neither.”

It was the end, this litany of truisms, draining away whatever little life the conversation ever had. In the way women are so quick to sense, Elizabeth knew it was the time to do things. She got cups and saucers from the dresser, bread from the white enamelled bread box, tea out of a paper bag on the mantelpiece. They took the cups in their hands at the fire, and a plate of buttered soda bread was passed about.

Mullins came as they were eating. He was no older than the others, but red and swollen, a raw smell of porter on his breath, though he appeared more depressed than tipsy.

“A wild night!” he said. “It seems I’m the last of the Mohicans.”

“But the last shall be first, remember,” Casey couldn’t resist quoting. With his weak laugh it came like a sneer of derision. Mullins stiffened at the door with resentment.

“Aye!” he answered inarticulately back. “And the first might be last.”