John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘He’ll be buried there the day after tomorrow.’

The house hadn’t changed, whitewashed, asbestos-roofed, the chestnut tree in front standing in the middle of the green fields on the edge of the bog; but the road was now tarred to the door, and all around the house new cattle sheds had sprung up.

Four cars were parked on the street and the door of the small house was open. A man shading his eyes with his hand came to the doorway as soon as the Mercedes came to a stop. It was Jim Cullen, the man who had telephoned the news of the death, smaller now and white-haired. He welcomed the three brothers in turn as he shook their hands. ‘I’m sorry for your trouble. You were great to come all the way. I wouldn’t have known any of you except for Fonsie. Your poor mother didn’t manage to come?’

‘She wasn’t up to it,’ Philly said. ‘She hasn’t left the house in years.’

As soon as they entered the room everybody stood up and came towards them and shook hands: ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’ There were three old men besides Jim Cullen, neighbours of the dead man who had known them as children. Mrs Cullen was the older woman. A younger man about their own age was a son of the Cullens, Michael, whom they remembered as a child, but he had so grown and changed that his appearance was stranger to them than the old men.

‘It’s hard to think that Peter, God rest him, is gone. It’s terrible,’ Jim Cullen said as he led them into the bedroom.

The room was empty. A clock somewhere had not been stopped. He looked very old and still in the bed. They would not have known him. His hands were enormous on the white sheet, the beads a thin dark trickle through the locked fingers. A white line crossed the weathered forehead where he had worn a hat or a cap. The three brothers blessed themselves, and after a pause John and Philly touched the huge rough hands clasped together on the sheet. They were very cold. Fonsie did not touch the hands, turning the chair round towards the kitchen before his brothers left the side of the bed.

In the kitchen Fonsie and Philly drank whiskey. Mrs Cullen said it was no trouble at all to make John a cup of tea and there were platefuls of cut sandwiches on the table. Jim Cullen started to take up the story of Peter’s death. He had told it many times already and would tell it many times again during the next days.

‘Every evening before dark Peter would come out into that garden at the side. It can be seen plain from our front door. He was proud, proud of that garden though most of what it grew he gave away.’

‘You couldn’t have a better neighbour. If he saw you coming looking for help he’d drop whatever he was doing and swear black and blue that he was doing nothing at all,’ an old man said.

‘It was lucky,’ Jim Cullen resumed. ‘This woman here was thinking of closing up the day and went out to the door before turning the key, and saw Peter in the garden. She saw him stoop a few times to pull up a weed or straighten something and then he stood for a long time; suddenly he just seemed to keel over into the furrow. She didn’t like to call and waited for him to get up and when he didn’t she ran for me out the back. I called when I went into the garden. There was no sight or sound. He was hidden under the potato stalks. I had to pull them back before I was able to see anything. It was lucky she saw him fall. We’d have had to look all over the bog for days before we’d have ever thought of searching in the stalks.’

‘Poor Peter was all right,’ Philly said emotionally. ‘I’ll never forget the day he put me up on the counter of the Rockingham Arms.’

He was the only brother who seemed in any way moved by the death. John looked cautiously from face to face but whatever he found in the faces did not move him to speak. Fonsie had finished the whiskey he’d been given on coming from the room and appeared to sit in his wheelchair in furious resentment. Then, one by one, as if in obedience to some hidden signal or law, everybody in the room rose and shook hands with the three brothers in turn and left them alone with Jim and Maggie Cullen.

As soon as the house had emptied Jim Cullen signalled that he wanted them to come down for a minute to the lower room, which had hardly been used or changed since they had slept there as children: the bed that sank in the centre, the plywood wardrobe, the blue paint of the windowsill half flaked away and the small window that looked out on all of Gloria, straight across to the dark trees of Killeelan. First, Jim showed them a bill for whiskey, beer, stout, bread, ham, tomatoes, butter, cheese, sherry, tea, milk, sugar. He read out the words slowly and with difficulty.

‘I got it all in Henry’s. Indeed, you saw it all out on the table. It wasn’t much but I wasn’t certain if anybody was coming down and of course I’d be glad to pay it myself for poor Peter. You’ll probably want to get more. When word gets out that you’re here there could be a flood of visitors before the end of the night.’ He took from a coat a large worn bulging wallet. ‘Peter, God rest him, was carrying this when he fell. I didn’t count it but there seems to be more than a lock of hundreds in the wallet.’

Philly took the handwritten bill and the wallet.

‘Would Peter not have made a will?’ John asked.

‘No. He’d not have made a will,’ Jim Cullen replied.

‘How can we be sure?’

‘That was the kind of him. He’d think it unlucky. It’s not right but people like Peter think they’re going to live for ever. Now that the rest of them has gone, except your mother, everything that Peter has goes to yous,’ Jim Cullen continued as if he had already given it considerable thought. ‘I ordered the coffin and hearse from Beirne’s in Boyle. I did not order the cheapest — Peter never behaved like a small man when he went out — but he wouldn’t like to see too much money going down into the ground either. Now that you’re all here you can change all that if you think it’s not right.’

‘Not one thing will be changed, Jim,’ Philly said emotionally.

‘Then there’s this key.’ Jim Cullen held up a small key on a string. ‘You’ll find it opens the iron box in the press above in the bedroom. I didn’t go near the box and I don’t want to know what’s in it. The key was around his poor neck when he fell. I’d do anything in the world for Peter.’

‘You’ve done too much already. You’ve gone to far too much trouble,’ Philly said.

‘Far too much,’ John echoed. ‘We can’t thank you enough.’

‘I couldn’t do less,’ Jim Cullen replied. ‘Poor Peter was one great neighbour. Anything you ever did for him he made sure you got back double.’

Fonsie alone did not say a word. He glowed in a private, silent resentment that shut out everything around him. His lips moved from time to time but they were speaking to some darkness seething within. It was relief to move out of the small cramped room. Mrs Cullen rose from the table as soon as they came from the room as if making herself ready to help in any way she could.

‘Would you like to come with us to the village?’ Philly asked.

‘No, thanks,’ Jim Cullen answered. ‘I have a few hours’ shuffling to do at home but then I’ll be back.’

When it seemed as if the three brothers were going together to the village the Cullens looked from one to the other and Jim Cullen said, ‘It’d be better if one of you stayed … in case of callers.’

John volunteered to stay. Philly had the car keys in his hand and Fonsie had already moved out to the car.

‘I’ll stay as well,’ Mrs Cullen said. ‘In case John might not know some of the callers.’

While Fonsie had been silent within the house, as soon as the car moved out of the open bog into that part of the lane enclosed by briars and small trees, an angry outpouring burst out like released water. Everything was gathered into the rushing complaint: the poor key with the string, keeling over in the potato stalks, the bloody wallet, the beads in the huge hands that he always felt wanted to choke him, the bit of cotton sticking out of the corner of the dead man’s mouth. The whole thing was barbaric, uncivilized, obscene: they should never have come.