John McGahern - The Barracks

“ Seven feet was his height with some inches to spare And he looked like a king in command ,”

he quoted out of the marching song.

There was immediate feeling of blasphemy. The song connected up with Jesus Christ, though Casey had meant no harm, he said it just because it happened into his head and he’d decided to say something. In the subsequent uneasiness the time was noticed. It was five to eleven.

“There’ll be murder,” Casey jumped. “That woman of mine’ll be expectin’ me for this past hour.”

He put on his cap and coat in the dayroom. Elizabeth hurried Una so that she was waiting for him at the door. She wore Wellingtons and had the parcel of her nightdress clasped inside her blue raincoat.

“It’s time for any respectable man to be makin’ home,” either Brennan or Mullins said and they went down to sign the books and left almost on the others’ heels.

Reegan rose from the fire and pulled back the circle of chairs. His hair was tousled from scratching it with sleep, the collar of the tunic still unclasped, his feet loose in the boots.

“It’s a good cursed job that those don’t decide to come up many nights,” he complained.

His face was ugly with resentment.

“Oh, it wasn’t so much harm, was it?” Elizabeth pleaded. “The nights are often long enough on us.”

“But were you listenin’ to that rubbish? — Jesus Christ and Kelly, the Boy from Killann. Sufferin’ duck, but did you hear that rubbish?”

He was shouting. Elizabeth had to gather herself together before answering quietly, “It’s only a saying that He was six feet tall. Does it matter very much? Did you never hear it?”

“Of course I heard it,” he cried, beside himself. “I’m not deaf, unfortunately. If you listened long enough to everything said around here you’d soon hear the Devil himself talkin’.”

Then he grew quieter and said without passion, as if brooding, “Surely you’re not gettin’ like the rest of them, girl?”

She drew closer. She felt herself no longer a woman growing old. She wasn’t conscious of herself any more, of whatever beauty had been left her any more than her infirmities, for she was needed.

“No, but does it matter what they say?” she said. “Hadn’t the night to pass?”

The night had to pass, but not in that manner, was how he reacted. He turned towards the radio that stood on a small shelf of its own, some bills and letters scattered beside its wet battery, between the sideboard and curtained medicine press.

“Such rubbish to have to listen to,” he muttered. “And in front of the childer.… And the same tunes night-in, night-out, the whole bloody year round.”

He switched on the radio. The Sweepstake programme was ending. To soft music a honeyed voice was persuading, “It makes no difference where you are — You can wish upon a star.”

It should all make you want to cry. You were lonely. The night was dark and deep. You must have some wish or longing. The life you lead, the nine to five at the office, the drudgery of a farm, the daily round, cannot be endured without hope.

“So now before you sleep make up your mind to buy a Sweepstake ticket and the first prize of £50,000 out of a total of £200,000 in prizes on this year’s Grand National may be yours.”

The music rose for the young night. It was Venice, the voice intoned. There was moonlight on the sleeping canals as the power of longing was given full sway. A boy and a girl drift in their boat. There is a rustle of silken music from the late-night taverns. They clasp each other’s hands in the boat. The starlight is in her hair and his face is lifted to hers in the moonlight. He is singing softly and his voice drifts across the calm water. It is Venice and their night of love.…

In spite of themselves they felt half-engulfed by this induced flood of sentimentality and sick despair. Reegan switched it off as the speaking voice faded for a baritone to ease the boy’s song of love into the music. The house was dead still.

“The news is long over,” he said. “Are ye all ready for the prayers? We should have them said ages ago.”

He took a little cloth purse from his watch pocket and let the beads run into his palm. He put a newspaper down on the cement and knelt with his elbows on the table, facing his reflection in the sideboard mirror.

Elizabeth’s and the children’s beads were kept in an ornamental white vase on the dresser. Willie climbed on a chair to get them from the top shelf. Elizabeth’s beads were a Franciscan brown, their own pale mother-of-pearl with silver crosses that they’d been given for their First Communion.

They blessed themselves together and he began:

“ Thou, O Lord, will open my lips ”,

“ And my tongue shall announce Thy praise ,” they responded.

They droned into the Apostles’ Creed . Then Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Glory be to the Fathers were repeated over and over in their relentless monotony, without urge or passion, no call of love or answer, the voices simply murmuring away in a habit or death, their minds not on what they said, but blank or wandering or dreaming over their own lives.

Elizabeth’s fingers slipped heedlessly along the brown beads. No one noticed that she’d said eleven Hail Marys in her decade. She had tried once or twice to shake herself to attention and had lapsed back again.

She felt tired and sick, her head thudding, and she put her hands to her breasts more than once in awareness of the cysts there. She knelt with her head low between her elbows in the chair, changing position for any distraction, the words she repeated as intrusive as dust in her mouth while the pain of weariness obtruded itself over everything that made up her consciousness.

She knew she must see a doctor, but she’d known that months before, and she had done nothing. She’d first discovered the cysts last August as she dried herself at Malone’s Island, a bathing-place in the lake, not more than ten minutes through the meadows; and she remembered her fright and incomprehension when she touched the right breast again with the towel and how the noise of singing steel from the sawmill in the woods pierced every other sound in the evening.

What the doctor would do was simple. He’d send her for a biopsy. She might be told the truth or she might not when they got the result back, depending on them and on herself. If she had cancer she’d be sent for treatment. She had been a nurse. She had no illusions about what would happen.

She had been only away from the house once since she was married. She shuddered at how miserable she’d been those three days, the first blight on her happiness.

A cousin had invited her to her wedding in Dublin. She’d no desire to go, but that she had been remembered so surprised her with delight that she told them about the letter at the dinner hour.

“You might as well take the chance when you get it. It mightn’t be offered again. It’d be a break for you. It’d take you out of yourself for a few days,” she was pressed to go.

“But look at the cost! The train fare. The hotel. A wedding present for Nuala. And how on earth would I get past those shop windows full of things without spending every penny we have?” she laughed.

“Never you mind, girl. If the money’s wanted it’ll be always found,” Reegan said.

“Why don’t you go, Elizabeth, when you get the chance?” Willie asked wonderingly.

“Who’d look after the place while I was away, Willie?”

“That’s a poor excuse,” Reegan said. “There’s no fear of the auld barracks takin’ flight while you’re away, though more’s the pity!”

“And what if some one ran away with you when I was gone?” she asked flirtatiously.