John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘Another colleague who was in Drumcondra the same year as myself has gone to his reward,’ he said when he looked up. ‘A great full-back poor Bernie was, God rest him.’

I held up the rabbit by way of answer.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘A stoat was killing it on the links.’

‘That’s what they do. Why did you bring it back?’

‘I just brought it. The crying gave me a fright.’

‘What will we cook for dinner? You know Miss McCabe is coming tonight?’

‘Not the poor rabbit anyhow. There’s lamb chops and cheese and wine and salad.’

My father had asked me to come to Strandhill because of Miss McCabe. They’d been seeing one another for several months and had arranged to spend August at the ocean. They seemed to have reached some vague, timid understanding that if the holiday went well they’d become engaged before they returned to their schools in September. At their age, or any age, I thought their formality strange, and I an even stranger chaperon.

‘Why do you want me to come with you?’ I had asked.

‘It’d look more decent — proper — and I’d be grateful if you’d come. Next year you’ll be a qualified doctor with a life of your own.’

I had arranged to do postgraduate work for my uncle, a surgeon in Dublin, when my father pleaded for this last summer. I would golf and study, he would read the Independent and see Miss McCabe.

The summer before he had asked me, ‘Would you take it very much to heart if I decided to marry again?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t. Why do you ask?’

‘I was afraid you might be affronted by the idea of another woman holding the position your dear mother held.’

‘Mother is dead. You should do exactly as you want to.’

‘You have no objections, then?’

‘None whatever.’

‘I wouldn’t even think of going ahead if you’d any objections.’

‘Well, you can rest assured, then. I have none. Have you someone in mind?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he answered absently.

I put it aside as some wandering whim until several weeks later when he offered me a sheet of paper on which was written in his clear, careful hand: Teacher, fifty-two. Seeks companionship. View marriage. ‘What do you think of it?’ he asked.

‘I think it’s fine.’ Dismay cancelled a sudden wild impulse to roar with laughter.

‘I’ll send it off, then, so.’

After about a month he showed me the response. A huge pile of envelopes lay on his desk. I was amazed. I had no idea that so much unfulfilled longing wandered around in the world. Replies came from nurses, housekeepers, secretaries, childless widows, widows with small children, house owners, car owners, pensioners, teachers, civil servants, a policewoman, and a woman who had left at twenty years of age to work at Fords of Dagenham who wanted to come home. The postman inquired slyly if the school was seeking a new assistant, and the woman who ran the post office said in a faraway voice that if we were looking for a housekeeper she had a relative who might be interested.

‘I hope they don’t steam the damn letters. This country is on fire with curiosity,’ he said.

Throughout the winter I saw much of him because he had to meet many of the women in Dublin though he had to go to Cork and Limerick and Tullamore as well. In hotel lounges he met them, hiding behind a copy of the Roscommon Herald.

‘You’ve never in your life seen such a collection of wrecks and battleaxes as I’ve had to see in the last few months,’ he said, a cold night in late March after he had met the lady from Dagenham in the Ormond. ‘You’d need to get a government grant before you could even think of taking some of them on.’

‘Do you mean in appearance or as people?’

‘All ways,’ he said despairingly. ‘I have someone who seems a decent person, at least compared to what I’ve seen,’ and for the first time he told me about Miss McCabe.

Because of these interviews I was under no pressure to go home for Easter and I spent it with my uncle in Dublin. I wasn’t able to resist telling him, ‘My father’s going to get married.’

‘You must be joking. You’d think boring one poor woman in a lifetime would be enough.’

‘He’s gone about it in a curious way. He’s put an ad in the papers.’

‘An ad!’ Suddenly my uncle became convulsed with laughter and was hardly able to get words out. ‘Did he get … replies?’

‘Bundles. He’s been interviewing them.’

‘Bundles … God help us all. This is too much.’

‘Apparently, he’s just found someone. A schoolteacher in her forties.’

‘Have you seen this person?’

‘Not yet. I’m supposed to see her soon.’

‘My God, if you hang round long enough you see everything.’

My uncle combed his fingers through his long greying hair. He was a distinguished man and his confidence and energy could be intimidating. ‘At least, if he does get married, it’ll get him off your back.’

‘He’s all right,’ I replied defensively. ‘I’m well used to him by now.’

I met Miss McCabe in the lobby of the Ormond Hotel, a lobby that could have been little different to the many lobbies he had waited in behind a copy of the Roscommon Herald. They sat in front of me, very stiffly and properly, like two well-dressed, well-behaved children seeking adult approval. She was small and frail and nervous, a nervousness that extended, I suspected, well beyond the awkwardness and unease of the whole contrived meeting. There was something about her — a waif-like sense of decency — that was at once appealing and troubling. Though old, she was like a girl, in love with being in love a whole life long without ever settling on any single demanding presence until this late backward glance fell on my bereft but seeking father.

‘Well, what was your impression?’ he asked me when we were alone.

‘I think Miss McCabe is a decent, good person,’ I said uncomfortably.

‘You have … no objections, then?’

‘None.’

We had been here a week. I had seen Miss McCabe three or four times casually. She looked open-eyed and happy. She stayed in the Seaview Hotel beside the salt baths on the ocean front and went for walks along the shore with my father. They had lunches and teas together. Tonight she was coming to the house for the first time. In all his years in the world my father had never learned to cook, and I offered to take care of the dinner.

She wore a long blue printed dress, silver shoes, and silver pendants, like thin elongated pears, hung from her ears. Though she praised the food she hardly ate at all and took only a few sips from the wine glass. My father spoke of schools and curricula and how necessary it was to get to the sea each August to rid oneself of staleness before starting back into the new school year, and her eyes shone as she followed every heavy word.

‘You couldn’t be more right. The sea will always be wonderful,’ she said.

It seemed to discomfort my father, as if her words belonged more to the sea and air than to his own rooted presence.

‘What do you think?’ he asked predictably when he returned from leaving her back to the Seaview.

‘I think she is a very gentle person.’

‘Do you think she has her feet on the ground?’

‘I think you are very lucky to have found her,’ I said. The way he looked at me told me he was far from convinced that he had been lucky.

The next morning he looked at me in a more dissatisfied manner still when a girl came from the Seaview to report that Miss McCabe had a mild turn during the night. A doctor had seen her. She was recovering and resting in the hotel and wanted to see my father. The look on his face told me that he was more than certain now that she was not near rooted enough.