John McGahern - The Collected Stories

He drove fast but steadily into the city. He was silent as he drove. Increasingly, he seemed charged with an energy that was focused elsewhere and had been fuelled by every stop they had made. In the heart of the city, seeing a vacant place in front of Mulligan’s where he had drunk on his own in the deep silence of the bar a few short mornings before, he pulled across the traffic and parked. Cars stopped to blow hard at him but he paid no attention as he parked and got out.

‘We’ll have a last drink here in the name of God before we face back to the mother,’ Philly said as he carried Fonsie into the bar. There were now a few dozen early evening drinkers in the bar. Some of them seemed to know the brothers, but not well. John offered to move Fonsie from the table to an armchair but Fonsie said he preferred to remain where he was. John complained that he hadn’t asked for the pint when the drinks were brought to the table.

‘Is it a short you want, then?’

‘No. I have had more drink today than I’ve had in years. I want nothing.’

‘Don’t drink it, then, if you don’t want,’ he was told roughly.

‘Well, Peter, God rest him, was given a great send-off,’ Philly said with deep satisfaction as he drank. ‘I thank God I was back. I wouldn’t have been away for the world. The church was packed for the removal. Every neighbour around was at Killeelan.’

‘What else have they to do down there? It’s the one excuse they have to get out of their houses,’ Fonsie said.

‘They honour the dead. That’s what they do. People still mean something down there. They showed the respect they had for Peter.’

‘Respect, my arse. Everybody is respected for a few days after they conk it because they don’t have to be lived with any more. Oh, it’s easy to honour the dead. It doesn’t cost anything and gives them the chance to get out of their bloody houses before they start to eat one another within.’

An old argument started up, an argument they had had many times before without resolving anything, the strength of their difference betraying the hidden closeness.

Philly and Fonsie drained their glasses as John took the first sip from his pint and he looked uneasily from one to the other.

‘You have it all crooked,’ Philly said as he rose to get more drink from the counter. John covered his glass with his palm to indicate that he wanted nothing more. When Philly came back with the two pints he started to speak before he had even put the glasses down on the table: he had all the blind dominating passion of someone in thrall to a single idea.

‘I’ll never forget it all the days of my life, the people coming to the house all through the night. The rows and rows of people at the removal passing by us in the front seat of the church grasping our hands. Coming in that small lane behind the hearse; then carrying Peter up that hill.’

Fonsie tried to speak but Philly raised his glass into his face and refused to be silenced.

‘I felt something I never felt when we left the coffin on the edge of the grave. A rabbit hopped out of the briars a few yards off. He sat there and looked at us as if he didn’t know what was going on before he bolted off. You could see the bog and all the shut houses next to Peter’s below us. There wasn’t even a wisp of smoke coming from any of the houses. Everybody gathered around, and the priest started to speak of the dead and the Mystery and the Resurrection.’

‘He’s paid to do that and he was nearly late. I saw it all from the car,’ Fonsie asserted. ‘It was no mystery from the car. Several times I thought you were going to drop the coffin. It was more like a crowd of apes staggering up a hill with something they had just looted. The whole lot of you could have come right out of the Dark Ages, without even a dab of make-up. I thought a standard of living had replaced the struggle for survival ages ago.’

‘I have to say I found the whole ceremony moving, but once is more than enough to go through that experience,’ John said carefully. ‘I think of Peter making those small animals out of matchsticks in the long nights on the bog. Some people pay money for that kind of work. Peter just did it out of some need.’

Philly either didn’t hear or ignored what John said.

‘It’s a godsend they don’t let you out often,’ Fonsie said. ‘People that exhibit in museums are a different kettle. Peter was just killing the nights on the bloody bog.’

‘I’ll never forget the boredom of those summers, watching Peter foot turf, making grabs at the butterflies that tossed about over the sedge. Once you closed your hand they always escaped,’ John said as if something long buried in him was drawn out. ‘I think he was making things out of matchsticks even then but we hardly noticed.’

‘Peter never wanted us. Mother just forced us on him. He wasn’t able to turn us away,’ Fonsie said, the talk growing more and more rambling and at odds.

‘He didn’t turn us away, whether he wanted to or not,’ Philly asserted truculently. ‘I heard Mother say time and time again that we’d never have got through some of the winters but for those long summers on the bog.’

‘She’d have to say that since she took us there.’

‘It’s over now. With Peter it’s all finished. One of the things that made the last days bearable for me was that everything we were doing was being done for the last time,’ John said with such uncharacteristic volubility that the two brothers just stared.

‘I’ll say amen to that,’ Fonsie said.

‘It’s far from over but we better have a last round for the road first.’ Philly drained his glass and rose, and again John covered his three-quarter-full glass with his palm. ‘As far as I can make out nothing is ever over.’

‘Those two are tanks for drink, but they don’t seem to have been pulling lately,’ a drinker at the counter remarked to his companion as Philly passed by shakily with the pair of pints. ‘The pale one not drinking looks like a brother as well. There must have been a family do.’

‘You’d wonder where that wheelchair brother puts all that drink,’ the other changed.

‘He puts it where we all put it. You don’t need legs, for God’s sake, to take drink. Drink only gets down as far as your flute.’

‘Gloria is far from over,’ Philly said as he put the two pints down on the table. ‘Nothing is ever over. I’m going to take up in Peter’s place.’

‘You can’t be that drunk,’ Fonsie said dismissively.

‘I’m not sober but I was never more certain of anything in my born life.’

‘Didn’t the lawyer say it’d go to Mother? What’ll she do but sell?’

‘I’m not sure she’ll want to sell. She grew up there. It was in her family for generations.’

‘I’m sure. I can tell you that now.’

‘Well, it’s even simpler, then. I’ll buy the place off Mother,’ Philly announced so decisively that Fonsie found himself looking at John.

‘I’m out of this,’ John said. ‘What people do is their own business. All I ask is to be let go about my own life.’

‘I’ve enough money to buy the place. You heard what the lawyer said it was worth. I’ll give Mother its price and she can do with it what she likes.’

‘We’re sick these several years hearing about all you can buy,’ Fonsie said angrily.

‘Well, I’ll go where people will not be sick, where there’ll be no upcasting,’ Philly said equally heatedly.

‘What’ll you do there?’ John asked out of a desire to calm the heated talk.

‘He’ll grow onions.’ Fonsie shook with laughter.

‘I can’t be going out to the oil fields for ever. It’ll be a place to come home to. You saw how the little iron cross in the circle over the grave was eaten with rust. I’m going to have marble put up. Jim Cullen is going to look after Peter’s cattle till I get back in six months and everything will be settled then.’