John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘Machines.’

‘And, say, if I didn’t want to go to see machines? If I want to go to see people?’

‘The machines will replace them so well as to make actors obsolete.’

‘Do you know what I remember?’ he said to avoid a quarrel. ‘The night you came from the theatre, first night of The Dragon , with all the roses, and we had to search among the roses for the one bottle of champagne.’

‘Do you love me as much as you did then?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I love you as much,’ and he knew less and less what love was.

‘It’d be nice if we could have birches and lakes and snow and the white white houses here as well as sun and sea.’

‘It’d be nice,’ he agreed.

‘And no sharksmell,’ she laughed.

VII

‘The cabbages,’ she cried. ‘I didn’t see to the cabbages. The day he was killed he wrote from the front for me to see to the cabbages.’

‘Why did he ask you?’

‘I was the farmer, I had the blonde hair, he wrote to me to look after the cabbages. I didn’t see to the cabbages.’

‘Why cabbages?’ The man tried to rock her quiet in his arms, stroking the straight blonde hair.

‘He was starting to grow cabbages, Father did, it was his plan, he wanted to spread out the earning, so as not to have to depend for all the money on the trees.’

‘How was he killed?’ The man realized he’d made a mistake in asking, the crying worsened, but perhaps it was better for her to cry the disturbance completely away.

‘In the forest. The soldiers were nervous. He was coming back from reconnoitring the Russian lines. The men were nervous. There were Russians in the forest. His Sergeant was killed too, but the two soldiers behind escaped.

‘They took the coffin out from the other coffins when the lorry brought him to the farm. And I didn’t see to the cabbages.’

‘If it wasn’t the cabbages it would be something else,’ he said. ‘All lives are so fragile that when they go for ever we feel as if we have betrayed them in some way.’ He tried to soothe.

‘I didn’t see to the cabbages,’ she sobbed, but more quietly, and then, ‘I’m sorry to break down like this.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all right. Why don’t we go for a swim?’

‘Let’s go for a swim.’ She suddenly smiled. ‘Let’s go for a swim.’

Everybody got the same blows in some way or other, he thought as they changed into bathing costumes. Now in this house they were busy making miserable their passing lives, when it should be as easy to live together in some care or tenderness.

‘I didn’t see to the cabbages. I didn’t see to the cabbages,’ would not leave his head.

VIII

The bus passed them in a cloud of white dust, trussed fowl and goats and rabbits hanging out of the sides, as they walked away from the house and rotting shark. All the seats in the bus were full and men were standing. On the shore, oil and tar started to cling to their ropesoles.

‘It’ll be nice when the shark disappears and we can swim down from the house again,’ the woman said. She’d begun to hum.

‘We won’t have this oil and tar.’ His words seemed to hang on the air in their ineffectiveness.

They swam far out. The woman was the better swimmer, and twice she swam under the man, laughing as her yellow cap surfaced, and then they lay on their backs and let the waves roll against them, closing their eyes because of the fierceness of the light. They started touching each other until the woman said, ‘It’s so long since we had a fuck! Why don’t we go in and have a fuck now?’

‘Why not,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in.’

They took the rope-soled sandals off the rock and walked unsure now in the knowledge of what they were about to do. Beyond the house and shark, the Canadian’s grey Rolls was being polished for its monthly outing to the bank in Murcia.

In the play on the white sheet of the bed when the man went to part the lips of the woman’s sex she pushed him away.

‘Your fingers don’t excite me. It’s your penis I want. It makes me feel like being — curse it, it’s another word I don’t know.’

She was about to reach for the dictionary when the man said, ‘No,’ and drew her to him. He tried to make up what each gallon cost of the load of water that had been put in the pool that morning to postpone his coming, but he still came long before her; and then, afraid he’d go limp, held her close for her to pump him until she came with a blind word in her own language, and as he listened to her panting it seemed that their small pleasures could hardly have happened more separately if they’d each been on opposite ends of the beach with the red house of the Canadian between.

It had not seemed as hopeless as this once though there had always been trouble, and there’d been less talk of rights and positions, less talk of the fashionable psychologists in paperback on the floor by her side of the bed.

‘Do you think I could go to an analyst when we get back to London?’ She turned towards him from the white sheet washed at the stone trough of the fontana by old Maria’s hands. He started: it was as if she’d touched too close to his thought.

‘Why do you want?’

‘Our relationship would get much better.’

‘But how would it do you good?’

‘All this summer I’ve got insights into myself and they’d come much quicker and clearer with an analyst.’

‘You get these insights from your reading?’

‘Yes. Much, much insights.’

‘It’d cost a lot of money to go to an analyst.’

‘I’d be brisker and do many more translations. It’d be easier for you to work too since the relationship would be much better.’

‘Our relationship was good once without benefit of analysis.’

‘But it was built on a false foundation,’ she said fiercely and the man turned his face away towards the sea to conceal his bitterness.

‘Maybe we could both go to the analyst,’ she said.

If he had to go to an analyst he would return to the Catholic Church and go to confession, which would at least be cheaper. He cursed secretly but answered, ‘No, I won’t go but you can go to an analyst if you think it’d do good.’

‘Much, much good,’ she said, ‘and our lives’ll be much happier. I won’t spend any more times in bed depressed and crying. We’ll be happy.’

‘We’ll be happy,’ the man said.

Later, as he got the Vespa out of the garage, he heard the clean taps of her typewriter come from the upstairs room.

IX

He drank beer in the café on the square and watched El Cordobés fight in Madrid on the television as he waited for the correo to come up from Garrucha. When the mule passed the café with the postman and grey correo bags, he looked at the clock. It would take them more than half an hour to sort the mail.

He didn’t pay for the beer but motioned to the barman that he’d be back at the end of the half-hour. It was a recognized habit by this time and the barman nodded back. If there was mail he’d come back to read it over a last beer at the café.

Ridges of rock were stripped on the road that ran uphill between low white houses to the post office. The mule was tethered to the black bars of the window and he’d to wait outside with the mule since the small room was crowded with black-shawled women. A muttering came from behind the closed grille where the postman and drunken postmaster were sorting the mail. When the grille was drawn noisily back the postmaster stared out at the women over spectacles and shouted, ‘Extranjeros.’ The women made way for the man to go up to the grille.

‘English,’ the postmaster shouted, reek of garlic and absinthe on his breath. He continued loudly in a garbled imitation of English, and started to slowly count out the letters for the foreigners of the place. As he counted each letter he shouted his imitation English but he counted slowly so that the man could read the names and take any letter addressed to him; he could have taken any letter he wished, for all the postmaster would know, but there was only one letter for him, it was from London, and a letter for his wife from her old theatre. The postmaster’s performance was meant to impress the women with his knowledge of English, but they winked and laughed throughout. As the man left he heard a woman shout some bawdry at the postmaster and his threats to clear the post offfice.