John McGahern - The Barracks

“Not a fear, girl,” he laughed. “Every dog for his day but you, you girl, it’s your day.”

She was flattered and satisfied. She would not go. Here they had need of her. What would she be at the wedding? A seat at the bottom of the breakfast-table, a relative who had married a widower in the country, a parable to those who had known her as a young girl.

“I think you should go, Elizabeth. I’d go if I was in your place, definitely,” Willie persuaded with obstinate persistence.

“But who’d cook and wash and bake and sew, Willie?”

“We would, Elizabeth. We’d stop from school in turn. We could buy loaves.…”

“You only think you could, Willie,” she tried to laugh it off nervously.

“We’d manage somehow,” he enthused, heedless of his child’s place in the house, he gestured excitedly with his hands and went on too quickly to be stopped.

“I think you’d be foolish to miss Dublin. Not many people ever get to Dublin. For the few days we’d be well able to manage. Shure, Elizabeth, didn’t we manage for ages before you ever came?”

It fell as natural as a blessing, “Didn’t we manage for ages before you ever came?” And they’d manage, too, if she was gone. She stood with the shock. She must have been holding something for she remembered not to let it fall. Then she broke down.

She thought she’d never be able to climb the stairs to her room, the things of the house gathering in against her; she thanked God that the dayroom door wasn’t open on her way.

She heard Reegan shout in the kitchen.

“Now do you see what you have done? Now do you see what you have done? Jesus Christ, can you not keep your mouth shut for wan minute of the day?”

Then the boy’s terrified protest, “I didn’t mean anything! I didn’t mean any harm, Daddy.”

Reegan’s shouts again, “Will you never understand? Will you never grow up? Will you never understand that women look on things different to men?”

She heard his feet follow her on the hollow stairs. She was sitting on the bed’s edge when he came into the room. She could not lift her head. He’d look as unreal as all people pleading.

“The lad meant nothing. He was only thinkin’ that we’d be able to give you a holiday at last. Shure you know yourself that we’d never be able to get on without you?”

He put his hands on her shoulders, she’d no wish to create a scene, she dried her face with her sleeve.

“I couldn’t help it,” she said, looking at him with a nervous smile. “But it doesn’t matter. It was only that it came so sudden.”

“Would you like to go to the wedding? The lad was only wantin’ to please you.…”

“Maybe, I should go,” she had tried to look bright. She had not wanted to go. It had been simply easier to go than to stay then.

She felt the pain at last was easing. The rosary was droning to its end in the kitchen. The decades were over. Reegan was sing-songing,

Mystical Rose

Tower of David

Tower of Ivory

House of Gold .

His face a mask without expression, staring as if tranced at its image in the big sideboard mirror, his fingers even now instinctively moving on the beads, the voice completely toneless that repeated Her praises, their continual “Pray for us”, like punctuating murmurs of sleep.

“The Dedication of the Christian Family,” began the last prayers, the trimmings.

Prayer for the Canonization of Blessed Oliver Plunkett — whose scorched head, they remembered reading on the leaflet, was on show in a church in Drogheda.

Prayers for all they were bound to pray for in duty, promise or charity.

Prayer for a happy death.

And the last prayer, the last terrible acknowledgement, the long iambic stresses relentlessly sledged:

O Jesus, I must die, I know not where nor when nor how, but if I die in mortal sin I go to hell for all eternity .

The newspapers were lifted, the beads and chairs returned to their places. They heard Casey come back from his supper. “Rush! Rush!” Reegan said to the boy and girl. “Off to bed! Ye’ll be asleep all day in school tomorrow if you don’t rush.”

Some red bricks had been set to warm at the fire. Willie slipped them into a pair of heavy woollen socks with the tongs. He lit the candles in their tin holders and they were ready to be kissed good night.

Sheila ran to Elizabeth. Reegan was sitting in front of the fire and the boy went close up to him, between his open knees. Hands came on his shoulders.

“Good night, Willie. God guard you.”

“Good night, Daddy.”

He lifted the hot bricks and said at the door, “Good night, Elizabeth.”

“Good night, Willie.”

At last they were in the hall, their fluttering candles lighting up the darkness. Casey was coming down the stairs, a pile of the dark grey police blankets in his arms, the top and bottom edges braided with official green thread. He had to feel out his steps very carefully because of his load. They waited on him at the foot of the stairs with the candles.

“Ye’re off to bed,” he said. “Hot bricks and all to keep ye warm.”

“Good night, Guard Casey,” they answered simply.

He turned to them laughing, the whiteness of his bald head thrust over the pile of blankets into their candlelight.

‘ Good night ,

Sleep tight ,

And mind the fleas don’t bite ,”

he recited.

They smiled with polite servility, but it was the end of the night, and his pleasantness went through them like a shiver of cold. They watched him cruelly as he shaped sideways to manœuvre his load of blankets through the dayroom door. They took his place on the stairs, the paint completely worn away in the centre of the steps, and even the wood shredding and a little hollowed by years of feet. They climbed without speaking a word. When they got near the top they could see their images with candles and bricks mounting into the night on the black shine of the window. It was directly at the head of the stairs, facing out on the huge sycamore between the house and the river. There was no sign of moon or star, only two children with candles reflected out of its black depth, raindrops slipping down the glass without, where the masses of wind struggled and reeled in the night.

Willie went with Sheila into her room. On nights like these they were never at ease with each other.

“Will you be afraid now, Sheila?” he asked.

“I’ll leave the candle lit,” she said.

“And do you want the door open?”

He knew by the way she said “Aye” that she was almost dumb with fear.

“Well, you want nothing else so?”

An importance had crept into his voice, the situation making him feel and act like a grown person.

“No,” Sheila said. “Nothing.”

“Well, good night so, Sheila.”

“Good night, Willie.”

Downstairs Elizabeth strained Reegan’s barley water into a mug with a little blue circle above its handle. He drank it sitting before the dying fire, blowing at it sometimes, for it was hot. He loved drawing out these last minutes. The thought of Quirke didn’t trouble him any more than the thought of his own life and death. All things became remote and far away, speculations that might involve him one day, but they had no power over him now, and these minutes were his rest of peace.

“Is the cat out?” he asked.

“She didn’t come in at all tonight,” Elizabeth answered.

“Are the hens shut in?”

“They are.”

“Do you want me to go out for anything?”

“No. There’s nothing wanting.”

He rose, put the mug down on the table, and went and bolted the scullery door. She was setting the table for the morning when he came in.