John McGahern - The Barracks

“Don’t stay long now,” he said on his way to bed, because she’d found it hard to sleep since she grew uneasy about her breasts, and often sat reading for hours in the stillness after he’d go, books Willie brought her from the lending library in the school, a few books she’d brought with her from London and kept always locked in her trunk upstairs, books that’d grown in her life as if they’d been grafted there, that she’d sometimes only to handle again to experience blindingly.

“No. I won’t be a minute after you. When I rake the fire.”

At the hall door he noticed the intense strained look on her face.

“You look tired out. You’re killin’ yourself workin’ too hard.”

And then he asked as if he had been given vision, “Are you sure you’re feelin’ well, girl?”

“Don’t be foolish,” she tried to laugh. “How could I work too hard with the few things that’d have to be done in this house! When I rake the fire I’ll be in bed.”

“Don’t be long so, that readin’ at night’d drive a person crackers,” he said and left for his bed.

She put a few wet sods of turf on the fire, then covered it with ashes. She heard Casey noisily shifting his bed down in the dayroom, soon Reegan’s boots clattered overhead on the ceiling and she blew out the lamp and followed him to their room.

The alarm woke her out of a state that wasn’t deep enough to call it sleep. The night was still outside, and the room in total darkness with the blind of the one window down, the air raw with frost. The evenings of the wet February had gone; Lent was in, the days closing up an early Easter.

By sheer force of instinct and habit she reached across the shape of bedclothes that was Reegan and stopped the clock’s dance on the table. Then she fell back, though she knew it could only make it harder than ever to rise in the end, as tired as if she’d never slept. Reegan hadn’t woken; his elbow brushed her as he changed sides, the surface of his sleep no more than trembled by the alarm.

“If you go to bed tired and wake up tired,” began to twitch like a nerve in her mind, and stayed there in its mystifying repetition till she fixed it among the ad. columns of many magazines and newspapers, “If you go to bed tired and wake up tired drink Bourna-Vita.” She grimaced in recognition and settled herself deeper in the warmth. There had been another night of frost, she could tell by the air on her face. She didn’t know how she’d managed to get up since the frosts came, but even before then it was becoming a more desperate struggle with every fresh morning.

A few more minutes, she told herself, she’d stay: Reegan hadn’t woken: there was no noise of the children stirring in the next rooms; but, oh, the longer she enjoyed the stolen sweetness of these minutes the more it had to become a tearing of her flesh out of the bedclothes in the end. And she used to love rising into these March mornings, to let up the blinds gently in the silence and find the night not fully gone and the world white with frost. She’d unbolt the door to break the ice on the barrel with the edge of the basin and gasp with waking as her hands brought the frozen water to her face.

The mornings of these last weeks had been one long flinching from the cold and the day, what used to be the adventure once all changed to the drudgery she could barely get herself to face. She’d ask for nothing better than to lie on in bed and not to have to face anything, but these small reprieves she gave herself were always adding up till she rose in the last minute and the mornings were all a rush.

Suddenly she remembered: this was not any morning, it was the morning of the Circuit Court. She’d set the alarm for early, for twenty past seven. The room was still pitch dark, nothing was stirring.

How had she lain there for even these few minutes without it entering her mind? She had even checked his clothes the last thing in the kitchen the night before, and it had been on her mind between the fitful snatches of sleep she’d got during the night. Here she’d been playing a game of rising and it was a court day. Her dread of the cold and her weariness were gone in a flash: she was out of bed and dressed and moving through the dark to the door without being conscious that she’d managed to rise. She didn’t let up the blind or shut the bedroom door fully so as not to make noise. She could hear Reegan’s breathing as she left. She would not wake him until she was ready.

The house was quiet as death and dark as she came down, her slippers loud on the hollow stairs, her hand sliding down the wooden railing to guide her way; when it came against the large round knob at the bottom her foot searched out for the solid concrete. Here she could touch the dayroom door. She could hear nothing behind the shut door, but the smell of Mullins’s smoked Woodbines came. She trailed her fingers along the wall as she came up the hallway to avoid knocking against the collapsible form that was laid against it. When she let up the blinds a little light came in. The bare whiteness of the field sloping down to the river and the hill beyond shone against the dark. She lit the small glass oil lamp and turned to rake the coals out of the ashes.

She worked quickly and well and without thinking much. She didn’t wash herself or brush her hair or go outside till she had to get water out of the barrel for Reegan’s shaving. The cold made her wince as she broke the ice, and she saw their black cat dart in through the door she’d left open; she came in afraid to find her thieving, but she was only waiting to wrap her frozen fur about Elizabeth’s legs and purred and cried loudly till she was given a saucer of milk in the scullery.

The children were rising, their feet were padding on the boards overhead. The kettle was boiling, the shaving water, the slices of bacon laid on the pan ready for frying, the table set. The morning’s work was almost done; her sense of purpose, of things needing her to do them, failing fast. There wasn’t enough in front of her now to keep her going headlong: she didn’t want to wash or brush her hair and she could not bear the look of her face in the mirror; and when the children came with a rush of life into the kitchen it made her only more oppressively aware of her sickness. “There was frost, Elizabeth?” their cries came. “We’ll be able to slide on Malone’s pond if it keeps up.”

She could only answer them with tired assent. There seemed no end to their excitement and curiosity. She wondered if they’d wake Reegan.

“Daddy’s off to court today?”

“Yes.”

“Is it time for him to get up, Elizabeth?”

“Can I go up to call him?”

“Me, Elizabeth, I’ll go up!”

“Let Sheila go up so,” she said to Una.

“Then I can quench the lamp, Elizabeth? It’s no good any more, it’s too bright.”

“I’ll shine his boots, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, it seemed without end. Sheila was racing up the stairs. The blinded darkness met her with a shock. She stood at the door and called, “Daddy, it’s time to get up,” but she got no answer and she had to tiptoe to the window and let up the blind so that the light poured in.

“Daddy, it’s time to get up,” she timidly rocked his shoulder.

She had to rock harder and raise her voice.

“It’s the day for the court, Daddy.”

He grunted, and then suddenly opened his eyes. She felt the wild fright of his eyes opened on her and not recognizing her and then the slow remembering and the dawning there of the world he lived in. At last he knew who she was.

“It’s time to get up, Daddy.”

“It’s you, Sheila,” he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “What day is today, Sheila?”