John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘All right. As long as you promise to leave as soon as it’s done.’ Her voice stopped him. It had a calm she didn’t feel.

‘Okay, it’s a promise.’ They both nodded eagerly. They reminded her of mastered boys as they asked apprehensively, ‘With the … or without?’

‘With.’

The jefe followed her first into the room. ‘All the clothes off,’ was his one demand. She averted her face while it took place. A few times after parties, when she was younger, hadn’t she held almost total strangers in her arms? Then she fixed completely on the two sentences The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July , her mind moving over them from beginning to end, and from beginning to end, again and again. Manolo rushed out of the room when he had finished. They kept their word and left, subdued and quiet. It had not been as jolly as they must have imagined it would be.

She showered and washed and changed into new clothes. She poured herself a large glass of cognac at the table, noticing that they must have taken the condoms. Then she began to sob, dry and hard at first, rising to a flood of rage against her own foolishness. ‘There is only one real sin — stupidity. You always get punished for behaving stupidly,’ the poet Severi was fond of repeating.

When she quietened she drank what was left of the cognac and then started to pack. She stayed up all night packing and putting the house in order for her departure. Numbed with tiredness she walked to the village the next morning. All the seats on the express that passed through Vera were booked for that day but she could take the rápido to Granada and go straight to Barcelona from there. She arranged for the one taxi in the village to take her to the train. The taximan came and she made listless replies to his ebullient talk on the drive by the sea to meet the train. The rápido was full of peasants and as it crawled from station to small station she knew it would be night before it reached Granada. She would find some hotel close to the station. In the morning she would see a doctor and then go to Barcelona. A woman in a black shawl on the wooden seat facing her offered her a sliver of sausage and a gourd of wine. She took the sausage but refused the wine. She wasn’t confident that her hands were steady enough to direct the thin stream into her mouth. Then she nodded to sleep, and when she woke she thought the bitter taste of oysters was in her mouth and that an awful lot of people were pacing up and down and waving their arms around. She had a sudden desire to look out the window to see if the word Oysters was chalked on the wagon; but then she saw that the train had just stopped at a large station and that the woman in the black shawl was still there and was smiling on her.

There was such a strain on the silence between them after he’d eaten that it had to be broken.

‘Maybe we should never have given up the farm and come here. Even though we had no one to pass it on to,’ Michael said, his head of coarse white hair leaning away from his wife as he spoke. What had happened today would never have happened if they’d stayed, he thought, and there’d be no shame; but he did not speak it.

‘Racing across hedges and ditches after cattle, is it, at our age. Cows, hens, pigs, calves, racing from light to dark on those watery fields between two lakes, up to the tips of our wellingtons in mud and water, having to run with the deeds to the bank manager after a bad year. I thought we’d gone into all this before.’

‘Well, we’d never have had to retire if we’d stayed.’ What he said already sounded lame.

‘We’d be retired all right. We’d be retired all right, into the graveyard long years ago if we’d stayed. You don’t know what a day this has been for me as well.’ Agnes began to cry and Michael sat still in the chair as she cried.

‘After I came home from Tesco’s I sorted the parcels,’ she said. ‘And at ten to one I put the kippers under the grill. Michael will have just about finished his bottle of Bass and be coming out the door of the Royal, I said when I looked at the clock. Michael must have run into someone on his way back, I thought, as it went past one. And when it got to ten past I said you must have fell in with company, but I was beginning to get worried.’

‘You know I never fall in with company,’ he protested irritably. ‘I always leave the Royal at ten to, never a minute more nor less.’

‘I didn’t know what way to turn when it got to half past, I was that paralysed with worry, and then I said I’ll wait five minutes to see, and five minutes, and another five minutes, and I wasn’t able to move with worry, and then it was nearly a quarter past two. I couldn’t stand it. And then I said I’ll go down to the Royal. And I’ll never know why I didn’t think of it before.

‘Denis and Joan were just beginning to lock up when I got to the Royal. “What is it, Agnes?” Denis said. “Have you seen Michael?” I asked. “No.” Denis shook his head. “He hasn’t been in at all today. We were wondering if he was all right. It’s the first time he’s not showed up for his bottle of Bass since he had that flu last winter.” “He’s not showed up for his lunch either and he’s always on the dot. What can have happened to him?” I started to cry.

‘Joan made me sit down. Dennis put a brandy with a drop of port in it into my hand. After I’d taken a sip he said, “When did you last see Michael?” I told him how we went to Tesco’s, and how I thought you’d gone for your bottle of Bass, and how I put on the kippers, and how you never showed up. Joan took out a glass of beer and sat with me while Denis got on the phone. “Don’t worry, Agnes,” Joan said, “Denis is finding out about Michael.” And when Denis got off the phone he said, “He’s not in any of the hospitals and the police haven’t got him so he must be all right. Don’t rush the brandy. As soon as you finish we’ll hop in the car. He must be nearhand.”

‘We drove all round the park but you weren’t on any of the benches. “What’ll we do now?” I said. “Before we do anything we’ll take a quick scout round the streets,” Denis said, and as soon as we went through the lights before Tesco’s he said, “Isn’t that Michael over there with the shopping bag?”

‘And there you were, with the empty shopping bag in front of Tesco’s window. “Oh my God,” I said, “Michael will kill me. I must have forgot to collect him when I came out of Tesco’s,” and then Denis blew the horn, and you saw us, and came over.’

Every morning since he retired, except when he was down with that winter flu, Michael walked with Agnes to Tesco’s, and it brought him the feeling of long ago when he walked round the lake with his mother, potholes and stones of the lane, the boat shapes at intervals in the long lake wall to allow the carts to pass one another when they met, the oilcloth shopping bag he carried for her in a glow of chattering as he walked in the shelter of her shadow. Now it was Agnes who chattered as they walked to Tesco’s, and he’d no longer to listen, any response to her bead of talk had long become nothing but an irritation to her; and so he walked safely in the shelter of those dead days, drawing closer to the farm between the lakes that they had lost.

When they reached Tesco’s he did not go in. The brands and bright lights troubled him, and as she made all the purchases he had no function within anyhow. So on dry days he stayed outside with the empty shopping bag if it wasn’t too cold. When the weather was miserable he waited for her just inside the door beside the off-licence counter. When he first began to come with her after retiring, the off-licence assistants used to bother him by asking if they could help. As he said, ‘No thanks,’ he wanted to tell them that he never drank in the house. Only at Christmas did they have drink in the house and that was for other people, if they came. The last bottles were now three Christmases old, for people no longer visited them at Christmas, which was far more convenient. They went round to the Royal as usual Christmas Day. Denis still kept Sunday hours on Christmas Day. Though it was only the new assistants in the off-licence who ever noticed him on bad days now, he still preferred to wait for her outside with the shopping bag against the Special Offers pasted in the glass. By that time he would have already reached the farm between the lakes while walking with her, and was ready for work.