John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘I’m sorry,’ the hatted man said as he watched the father read. ‘If there’s anything I can do you have only to tell me.’

‘Joe’s been killed in England. The Lord have mercy on his soul,’ the father said in dazed quiet, handing the envelope to the mother, all his slow movements heavy with toil.

‘Oh my God. My Joe,’ the mother broke.

The older children began to cry, but two little girls lifted fistfuls of hay and began to look playfully at one another and the whole stunned hayfield through wisps of hay and to laugh wildly.

‘I’ll have to go to London. I’ll have to take him home,’ the father said.

‘If there’s anything I can do,’ the teacher said again.

‘Thanks, Master. Shush now,’ he said to his wife. ‘We’ll all go in now. The hay can be tidied up after. Shush now, Bridget. We have to do the best by him the few days more he’ll be with us,’ the father said as they trooped out of the hayfield.

‘Is there anything — a small drop of something — we can offer you, Master?’ They paused at the open door.

‘Nothing, thanks, Joe. What I’ll do is let you get tidied up and I’ll come round for you in about two hours. I’ll take you into the town so that you can see to things.’

‘Are you sure that won’t be putting you to too much trouble, Master?’

‘No trouble at all. Why don’t you go in now?’

Before he switched on the engine he heard from the open door, ‘Thou, Oh Lord, wilt open my lips,’ in the father’s voice. The leaves of the row of poplars along the path from the house were beginning to rattle so loudly in the evening silence that he was glad when the starting engine shut out the sound.

The father went to London and flew back with the coffin two days later. A long line of cars met the hearse on the Dublin road to follow it to the church. After High Mass the next day young people with white armbands walked behind the hearse until it crossed the bridge, where it gathered speed, and it did not slow until it came in sight of Ardcarne, where they buried him.

Some weeks later the Dance Committee met round the big mahogany table in the front room of the presbytery: the priest, the hatted teacher, the Councillor Doherty, Owen Walsh the sharp-faced postman, and Jimmy McGuire who owned the post office.

‘We seem to be nearly all here.’ The priest looked round when it had gone well past the time of the meeting.

‘We are,’ the postman answered quickly. ‘Paddy McDermott said he was sorry he couldn’t come. It’s something to do with sheep.’

‘We might as well begin, then,’ the priest said. ‘As we all know why we’re here I’ll just go over it briefly. Young Cunningham was killed in England. The family insisted on taking the body home. Whether it was wise or foolish it is done now and the only thing we know is that the Cunninghams can’t afford to fly a coffin home from England. The talk is that old Joe himself will have to go to England this winter to pay off the expense of the funeral. We all feel, I think, that there’s no need for that.’ There was a low murmur of approval.

‘So we’ve more or less decided to hold a dance,’ the teacher took up quietly. ‘Unless someone here has a better idea?’

‘Have we thought about a collection?’ the Councillor Doherty asked because he felt he should ask something.

‘The dance more or less covers that as well,’ the priest said, and the Councillor nodded comprehendingly. ‘Anybody not going will be invited to send subscriptions.’

‘I can manage that end of it,’ the postman said. ‘I can put the word out on my rounds so that it can be done without any fuss.’

‘There’s no question of getting a big band or anything like that. “Faith, Hope and Charity” will bring in as much and they’ll play for a few crates of stout. We’ll let people pay whatever they can afford,’ the priest said.

‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ were three old bachelor brothers, the Cryans, who played at local functions. They had been known as ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ for so long that nobody now knew how their name began. Faith played the fiddle. Hope beat out the rhythm on the drums. Charity was strapped into an old accordion that was said to have come from America.

‘Well, everything seems settled, then, so, except the date.’ The priest rose when everybody murmured agreement and unlocked the cabinet. He took out five heavy tumblers and a cut-glass decanter of whiskey. There was already a glass jug of water beside the vase of roses in the centre of the big table.

The dance was held on a lovely clear night in September. A big harvest moon hung over the fields. It was almost as clear as day coming to the dance and the hall was full. Most of the older people came just to show their faces and by midnight the dance belonged completely to the young. The Committee left after counting the takings. The postman and the teacher agreed to stay behind to close the hall. They sat on the table near the door watching the young people dance. The teacher had taught nearly all the dancers, and as they paired off to go into the backs of cars they showed their embarrassment in different ways as they passed the table.

‘Now that “Faith, Hope and Charity” are getting into right old playing form,’ the postman nodded humorously towards the empty crates of stout between the three old brothers playing away on the stage, ‘they seem to be losing most of their customers.’

‘Earlier and earlier they seem to start at it these days,’ the teacher said.

‘Still, I suppose they’re happy while they’re at it.’ The postman smiled, and folded his arms on the table at the door, always feeling a bit of an intellectual in these discussions with the hatted teacher, while ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ launched into the opening bars of ‘A Whistling Gypsy’.

‘No, Owen. No. I wouldn’t be prepared to go as far as that with you, now,’ James Sharkey began.

I was following a two-iron I had struck just short of the green when I heard the crying high in the rough grass above the fairway. The clubs rattled as I climbed towards the sound, but it did not cease, its pitch rising. The light of water from the inlet was blinding when I climbed out of the grass, and I did not see the rabbit at once, where it sat rigidly still on a bare patch of loose sand, crying. I was standing over the rabbit when I saw the grey body of the stoat slithering away like a snake into the long grass.

The rabbit still did not move, but its crying ceased. I saw the wet slick of blood behind its ear, the blood pumping out on the sand. It did not stir when I stooped. Never before did I hold such pure terror in my hands, the body trembling in a rigidity of terror. I stilled it with a single stroke. I took the rabbit down with the bag of clubs and left it on the edge of the green while I played out the hole. Then as I crossed to the next tee I saw the stoat cross the fairway following me still. After watching two simple shots fade away into the rough, I gave up for the day. As I made my way back to the cottage my father rented every August, twice I saw the stoat, following the rabbit still, though it was dead.

All night the rabbit must have raced from warren to warren, the stoat on its trail. Plumper rabbits had crossed the stoat’s path but it would not be deflected; it had marked down this one rabbit to kill. No matter how fast the rabbit raced, the stoat was still on its trail, and at last the rabbit sat down in terror and waited for the stoat to slither up and cut the vein behind the ear. I had heard it crying as the stoat was drinking its blood.

My father was reading the death notices on the back of the Independent on the lawn of the cottage. He always read the death notices first, and then, after he had exhausted the news and studied the ads for teachers, he’d pore over the death notices again.