John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘What happened?’

‘He got married. There were even pictures in the papers, confetti and buttonhole carnations,’ she said with self-mocking bitterness. ‘He’d the gall to come round and tell me about it, saying sanctimoniously how things would never have worked out between us anyhow. Practically asked my blessing.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I told him to go to hell.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘How do you feel now?’

‘My vanity took a hammering. I guess I’m not used to rejection.’

‘You should have gone out with me instead. We might be married now.’

‘Thanks,’ she laughed, ‘but that could never be.’

I told her I was going on holiday for the summer, to Sligo. ‘Maybe you might like to come down later,’ I said.

‘I doubt it. I have to work. I’ve done hardly any work.’

‘I’ll write you. You may change your mind.’

Her face was very pale and strained as she waved goodbye to me.

VI

Jimmy met me at Sligo Station. He had put on weight and I could see the light through his thinning hair, but the way the porters and the drivers playing cards at the taxi rank hailed him he was as popular here as he had been everywhere. Soon, walking with him and remembering the part of our lives that had been passed together, it was like walking in a continuance of days that had suffered no interruption.

‘I hope getting the digs didn’t put you to a great deal of trouble,’ I said.

‘No. The old birds were pleased as punch. Ordinarily it’s full, but this time they’ve always rooms because of people gone on holidays.’

The ‘old birds’ were two sisters in their fifties who owned the big stone house down by the harbour where Jimmy had digs and where I had come on holiday. A brother who was a Monsignor in California had bought it for them. I had never seen before walls so completely laden with cribs and religious pictures. There was the usual smell of digs, of cooking and feet and sweat, the sharp scent of HP sauce, the brown bottle on every lino-covered table.

‘They’re religious mad but they’re good sorts and they won’t bother you. They have to cook for more than thirty,’ Jimmy said after he had introduced me and showed me to my room, mockingly sprinkling holy water from a font between the feet of a large statue of the Virgin as he left. There were at least thirty men at tea that evening. Out of the aggressive bantering and horseplay as they ate, fear and insecurity and hatred of one another showed like a familiar face.

‘It’s the usual,’ Jimmy said when I mentioned it to him afterwards as we walked to the pub to talk. He was excited and greedy for news of the city. He even asked about Barnaby and Bartleby. ‘The gents of Abbey Street’.

‘Why do you remember them?’

‘I don’t know. I never paid them any attention when I was there. It’s only since I came here that I started to think about them.’

‘But why?’

‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘they highlight what we’re all at.’

‘Do you miss the city, then?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose. In a way my life ended when I left it. When I was there it still seemed to have possibilities, but now I know it’s all fixed.’

‘And that girl — was it Mary Jo?’ I named a dark, swarthy girl, extraordinarily attractive rather than goodlooking.

‘The Crystal, National, Metropole, Clerys.’ He repeated the names of the ballrooms they had gone to together. ‘She went to England.’

‘Why didn’t you keep her?’

‘Maybe it wasn’t on. There seemed to be so much time then that there was no hurry. I went to London to try to see her but she was working at Littlewoods and had shacked up with a married Englishman.’

I could tell that he had suffered and changed. ‘Do you have anyone here?’

‘Yes. There was so much choice in Dublin. But here, if you get anything you have to hold on to it. There are so few women here.’ He sounded as if he was already apologizing. She was a dark pretty girl but she never spoke a word when we met. I noticed that only when alone with Jimmy did she grow animated.

‘And you, have you anybody?’ he asked.

‘No. There’s an American girl, but there’s nothing sexual. We’re just friends,’ and when I saw that he didn’t believe me I added, ‘There’s a slight chance she may still come down.’

The Blue Anchor was filling. All of the men nodded to Jimmy and many of them joined us with their pints. When an old fisherman came, Jack Kelly, place was made for him in the centre of the party beside Jimmy. It turned out that they were all members of the newly formed Pint Drinkers’ Association. Jack Kelly was the President and Jimmy was both Secretary and Treasurer. The publicans of the town had got together and fixed a minimum price for the pint, a few pence higher than what had been charged previously. The Pint Drinkers’ Association had been formed to fight this rise. They canvassed bars and pledged that the Pint Drinkers would drink only at those bars that kept to the old price. There cannot have been great solidarity among the publicans, for already six, including the Blue Anchor, which had become the Association’s headquarters, had agreed to return to the old price. When I paid the fee Jimmy wrote my name down in a child’s blue exercise book and Jack Kelly silently witnessed it. Soon afterwards we left the Blue Anchor and began a round of the bars that had gone back to the old price.

Time went by without being noticed in the days that followed: watching the boats in the harbour, leaning on the bridge of Sligo, the white foam churning under the weir, a weed or fish swaying lazily to the current; reading the morning paper on a windowsill or bar stool; the sea at Rosses and Strandhill. Often in the evenings we played handball at the harbour alley, and though our hands were swollen and all our muscles ached, again it was as if the years had fallen away and we were striking the small rubber inside the netting-wire of our old school, the cabbage stumps in the black clay of the garden between the alley and orchard. Afterwards we would meet in the Blue Anchor, from where we could set out on our nightly round of the bars that had agreed to keep the pint at its old price. As their number was growing steadily, it made for thirsty work.

‘It’s catching on like wildfire,’ I said to Jimmy as we lurched away from the last bar one evening, voluble with six or seven pints.

‘I’ll wait and see,’ Jimmy said. ‘It’ll probably be like everything else here. It’ll catch on for a while, then fall away.’

At this time Jimmy began to miss three evenings every week now that the Association, as he put it, was on a firm footing. He took his girl to the cinema or went dancing, and this disturbed Jack Kelly.

‘Jimmy’s beginning to show the white flag,’ he complained. ‘He’s missing again this evening. Watch my word. The leg-irons will be coming up soon.’

VII

These days might have stretched into weeks but for a card I sent to Kate O’Mara. I wrote that I was happy at the sea and that if she changed her mind and wished to join me to just write. Instead, she telegrammed that she was coming on the early train the next day. I booked two single rooms in a small hotel at Strandhill and Jimmy and I met her off the train. She was wearing sandals, and had on a sleeveless dress of blue denim, and dark glasses.

‘Jimmy’s an old friend. I thought we’d all have a glass and some sandwiches,’ I said when she seemed puzzled by Jimmy’s presence.

‘I had lunch on the train.’

‘That doesn’t matter. You can have a drink,’ Jimmy said as we took her bags.

‘I’m afraid I’m not a big drinker,’ she laughed nervously.

‘What’ll you have?’ I asked her in a bar down from the station, quiet with three porters discussing the racing page as they finished their lunch hour.