John McGahern - The Collected Stories

I had come to visit one of my married sisters, when I saw the quiet school. I said I too would live out my life in the obscurity of these small places; if I was lucky I’d find a young girl. To grow old with her among a people seemed ambition enough, there might even be children and fields and garden.

I got a school immediately, without trouble. The newly trained teachers wanted places in the university towns, not in these backwaters.

Now I am growing old in the school where I began. I have not married. I lodge in a pub in Carrick-on-Shannon. I travel in and out the seven miles on a bike to escape the pupils and their parents once the school is shut, to escape from always having to play an expected role. It is rumoured that I drink too much.

With mostly indifference I stand at the window and watch Canon Reilly shake a confession out of the boy Walshe, much as a dog shakes life out of a rat; and having nothing to do but watch I think of the sea. We went to the sea in summer, a black straggle in front of Novicemaster O’Grady, in threes, less risk of buggery in threes than pairs, the boards of the bridge across to the Bull hollow under the tread of our black sandals, and below us the tide washing against the timber posts. Far out on the Wall we stripped, guarding our eyes on the rocks facing south across the bay to the Pidgeon House, and when O’Grady blew the whistle we made signs of the cross on ourselves with the salt water and jumped in. He blew it again when it was time for us to get out. We towelled and dressed on the rocks, guarding our eyes, glad no sand could get between our toes, and in threes trooped home ahead of O’Grady and past the wired-down idiotic palm trees along the front.

The bell for night prayers went at nine-thirty, the two rows of pews stretching to the altar, a row along each wall and the bare lino-covered space between empty of all furniture, and we knelt in the long rows in order of our rank, the higher the rank the closer to the altar. On Friday nights we knelt in the empty space between the pews and said: My very dear Brothers, I accuse myself of all the faults I have committed since my last accusation, I broke the rule of silence twice, three times I failed to guard my eyes. After a certain rank and age the guarding of the eyes wasn’t mentioned, you were supposed to be past all that by then, but I never reached that stage. I got myself booted out before I became impervious to a low view of passing girls, especially on windy days.

The sea and the bell, nothing seems ever ended, it is such nonsenses I’d like written on my gravestone in the hope they’d sow confusion.

‘You admit it now after you saw you couldn’t brazen your way out of it,’ Reilly shouts at the boy, holding him by the arm in the empty space between the table and the long benches where the classes sit in rows.

‘Now. Out with what you spent the money on.’

‘Lemonade,’ the low answer comes, the white-faced boy starting to blubber.

‘Lemonade, yes, lemonade, that’s how you let the cat out of the bag. The Walshes don’t have shillings to squander in the shops on lemonade every day of the week.’

Still gripping the boy by the arm he turns to the rows of faces in the benches.

‘What sins did Walshe commit — mind I say sins , not one sin — but I don’t know how to call it — this foul act?’

I watch the hands shoot up with more attention than I’d given to the dreary inquisition of the boy. I was under examination now.

‘The sin of stealing, Canon.’

‘Good, but mind I said sins. It is most important in an examination of conscience before confession to know all the sins of your soul. One foul act can entail several sins.’

‘Lies, Canon.’

‘Good, but I’m looking for the most grievous sin of all.’

He turned from the blank faces to look at me: why do they not know?

‘Where was the poorbox when it was broken open?’ I ask, having to force the question out. Even after the years of inspectors I’ve never got used to teaching in another’s presence, the humiliation and the sense of emptiness in turning oneself into a performing robot in a semblance of teaching.

‘In the church, sir.’

‘An offence against a holy person, place or thing — what is that sin called?’

‘Sacrilege.’ The hands at once go up.

‘Good, but if you know something properly you shouldn’t need all that spoonfeeding.’ The implied criticism of me he addresses to the children.

‘Stealing, lies, and blackest of all — sacrilege.’ He turns again to the boy in his grip.

‘If I hand you over to the guards do you know where that will lead, Walshe? To the reformatory. Would you like to go to the reformatory, Walshe?’

‘No, Canon.’

‘You have two choices. You can either take your medicine from me here in front of the class or you can come to the barracks. Which’ll you take?’

‘You, Canon.’ He tries to appease with an appearance of total abjection and misery.

‘It’s going to be no picnic. You’ll have to be taught once and for all in your life that the church of God is sacred.’ He raises his voice close to declamation, momentarily releases his grip on the arm, takes a length of electric wire from his pocket. The boy whimpers quietly as the priest folds it in two before taking a firm grip on the arm again.

‘It’s going to hurt, Walshe. But if you’re ever again tempted to steal from the church you’ll have something to remember!’

In a half-circle the beating moves, the boy trying to sink to the floor to escape the whistle and thud of the wire wrapping round his bare legs but held up by the arm, the boy’s screaming and the heavy breathing of the priest filling the silence of the faces watching from the long benches in frightened fascination. When he finally lets go of the arm the boy sinks in a heap on the floor, the moaning changing to an hysterical sobbing.

‘Get up and go to your place and I hope that’s the last lesson you’ll have to be ever taught.’ He puts the length of wire back in his pocket and takes out a blue cloth to wipe his forehead.

The boy cowers as he rises, arms automatically protecting his torn legs, moves in a beaten crawl to his place, plunges his face in rage and shame into the folds of his arms and continues sobbing hysterically.

‘Open your geographies and get on with your study of the Shannon,’ I say as the heads turn towards Walshe. There’s the flap of the books being opened. They find the page, stealing a quick furtive look towards the boy as they bend their heads. In the sobbing silence the clock ticks.

‘An example had to be made to nip that blackguardism in the bud.’ He turns to me at the window.

‘I suppose.’

‘How do you mean suppose ?’ The eyes are dangerous.

‘I suppose it was necessary to do.’

‘It was necessary,’ he emphasizes, and after a pause, ‘What I’d like to see is religious instruction to counteract such influences after Second Mass every Sunday. Mr McMurrough always took it.’

‘It’s too far for me to come from the town to take.’

‘I can’t see any justification for you living in the town. I can’t see why you can’t live in the parish. The Miss Bambricks at the post office have mentioned to me that they’d be glad to put you up.’

The Miss Bambricks were two church-mad old maids who grew flowers for the altar and laundered the linen.

Old McMurrough, whom I had replaced and who now lay in the Sligo madhouse reciting poetry and church doctrine, had taken catechism in the church each Sunday, while the Canon waited at the gate to bear any truant who tried to escape with the main congregation back in triumph by the ear to the class in the sidechapel.

‘I am happy where I am,’ I say.