John McGahern - The Collected Stories

Before going to bed we put it to stew over a slow fire. The next morning he remained in bed. He knocked with his shoe on the boards and told us to inform Bannon that he was going sick. After signing the ledgers at nine Bannon climbed the stairs to see how he was, and on coming down rang Neary, the police doctor.

Neary called on his way to his noon dispensary. Bannon climbed with him to the bedroom door. Only the low murmur of question and answer, the creak of moving shoes on the boards, came at first, but then the voices rose. They lulled again, while the doctor apparently made some additional examination, only to rise again worse than ever. The voices brought Bannon to the open door at the foot of the stairs to listen there with hands behind his back. Each time the voices died he returned to his patient surveyal of the road from the dayroom window, only to be brought back to the foot of the stairs by a fresh bout of shouting. He was visibly uneasy, straightening down the front of his tunic, stuffing the white hankie farther up his sleeve, when the bedroom door opened and closed sharply, and the doctor’s quick steps were on the stairs. Bannon waited out of sight inside the open doorway until the doctor was at the foot of the stairs, then appeared obsequiously to unbolt the heavy front door of the porch, and followed Neary out on the gravel. The examination had lasted well past the noon of the doctor’s dispensary.

‘I hope there’s nothing serious?’ Bannon ventured on the gravel.

‘As serious as it can be — apparently mortal,’ the doctor answered with angry sarcasm as he put his satchel on the passenger seat of his car. ‘And he knows all about it. Why he needs to see me is the one puzzlement.’

‘How long will I mark him in the sick-book for?’ Bannon shied away.

‘Till kingdom come,’ the doctor answered; but, before he closed the car door, changed: ‘Till Wednesday. I’ll come on Wednesday.’

We brought him broth of the cow’s head and milk pudding, the air stale in the room with the one window shut tight on the river and half blinded; and Bannon, morning and evening, brought him local gossip or report, in which he took no interest. Every hour he spooned a concoction he’d made for himself from the juice of senna leaves and white powders.

On Wednesday Neary appeared well before his dispensary hour. This time the room upstairs was much quieter, though the door did close on, ‘What I want is to see a specialist, not a bunch of country quacks.’ The doctor was more quiet this time as he came down to the waiting Bannon at the foot of the stairs. When they passed through the heavy door on to the gravel, thick-veined sycamore leaves blowing towards the barrack wall from the trees of the avenue, Neary tentatively asked, ‘Had you noticed any change in the Sergeant before he took to bed?’

‘How do you mean, Doctor?’ Bannon was as always cautious.

‘Any changes in his behaviour?’

‘Well, there was the book.’

‘The book?’

‘The book he spent the whole summer poring over, a book he bought at the auction.’

‘What kind of book?’

‘Medical book, it was.’

‘Medical book’ — the doctor moved stones of the gravel slowly with his shoes as he repeated. ‘I might have known. Well, I won’t deny him benefit of specialists if that’s what he needs,’ and in the evening the doctor rang that a bed was available in the Depot Hospital. The Sergeant was to travel on the next day’s train. A police car or ambulance would meet him off the train at Amiens Street Station.

When Bannon climbed the stairs with the news, the Sergeant immediately rose and dressed.

‘It took him a long time to see the light,’ he said.

‘I hope they won’t keep you long there,’ Bannon answered carefully.

‘Tell the girls to get my new uniform out of the press,’ he asked the policeman. ‘And to get shirts and underwear and pyjamas out for packing.’

When he came down he told Bannon he could go home for the night. ‘You’ll have to mind this place for long enough on your own. I’ll keep an eye on the phone for this evening,’ he said with unusual magnanimity.

The packing he supervised with great energy, only remembering later that he was ill, and then his movements grew slow and careful again, finally shutting himself away with the silent phone behind the dayroom door. Before he did, he told me he wanted to see me there after the others had gone to bed.

A low ‘Come in’ answered my knock.

His feet rested on the bricks of the fireplace, a weak heat came from the dying fire of ash, and beside him, on another yellow chair, was the bomb box, the colour of mud and grass. A tin oil-lamp was turned low on the trestle table, on the black and red ink-stains, on the wooden dip pens standing in their wells, on the heavy ledgers and patrol books, on an unsheathed baton. A child muttering in its sleep from the upstairs room came through the door I’d left open. ‘Shut it. We’re not in a field,’ he said.

‘Early, in the summer, we talked about you managing without me. And you did a good job in the garden and bringing the timber down. Well, it looks as if we prepared none too soon.’

‘How?’

‘You know what clothes and feeds you all — my pay. The police own the roof above your head. With my death that comes to a full stop. We all know how far your relatives can be depended on — as far as the door.’

He’d his greatcoat on over his uniform, the collar turned up but unbuttoned, his shoulders hunched in a luxury of care as if any sudden movement might quench the weak flame of life the body held.

‘Fortunately I have made provisions for the day,’ he said, turning to the bomb box on the chair, and with the same slow carefulness unlocked it. Inside, against the mud and grass camouflage over the steel, was a green wad of money in a rubber band, two brown envelopes and a large package.

‘You see this money,’ he said. ‘It’s one hundred pounds. That’s for the immediate expenses when they take the body home. It won’t cross the bridge, it’ll go to Aughoo, to lie with your mother, no matter what your relatives try.

‘Then open this envelope, it has your name,’ he lifted the thin brown envelope, ‘all instructions for the immediate death, what to do, are down there one by one.

‘This other envelope has the will and deeds,’ he continued. ‘Lynch the solicitor in Boyle has the other copy, and the day after the funeral take this copy into him.

‘I have discussed it all with Lynch, he’ll help you with the purchase of a small farm, for after the death you’ll have to get out of the barracks if you don’t all want to be carted off to the orphanage, and if you dither the saved money’ll go like snow off a rope. Paddy Mullaney wants to sell and Lynch and I agreed it’s ideal if it comes at the right price. After the farm the first thing to get is a cow. You’ll have to work from light to dark on that farm to keep these children but it’ll be worth it and you have my confidence,’ he said with great authority.

He locked the box, and handed me one of the keys.

‘You have a key and I have a key. When news of the death comes you’ll go first thing and open the box with your key. Is that clear?’ he demanded.

What was to happen was taking clearer outline as I listened, eyes fixed on the bright metal of the key in the sweat of my palm.

‘The bigger package is not for the time being of any importance. It’s for when you grow older. Old watches, your mother’s rings, photos, locks of hair, medals, albums, certificates. It’s for when you all grow older.’ Then he remembered again that he was ill, and sank back at once into the dark blue greatcoat.

What he’d been saying was that he was going to die. He’d be put in a coffin. The coffin would be put in the ground and covered with clay. He’d give no answer to any call.