John McGahern - The Collected Stories

She stood below in the hallway beside the dark bentwood coat-rack, her legs crossed as if for a casual photo, arms folded, a tense smile fixed on her face, her hair brushed high. She had never come to the house on her own before.

‘Thanks,’ she said to the landlord when he came down.

‘Won’t you come up?’ he called from the head of the stairs.

The landlord made a face and winked again as she climbed.

‘I’m sorry coming like this,’ she said.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ he said as he closed the door. ‘I was just about to get ready to go to meet you. This way we can have even more time together.’

‘It’s not that,’ she said quickly. ‘I came round to see if you’d mind putting the evening off.’

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘No. It’s just that Margaret has come up of a sudden from the country.’

‘Your friend from school days?’

‘Yes. She hardly ever comes up. And I thought you wouldn’t mind giving the evening up so that we could go out together.’

‘Did she not tell you she was coming up?’ The whole long-looked-forward- to balm of the evening was threatened by this whim.

‘No. She came on a chance. Someone was coming up and offered her a lift.’

‘And she expects you to drop everything?’

‘She doesn’t expect anything.’ She met his annoyance with her own.

‘All I can say is that you must care very little about the evening if you can change it that quickly.’

‘Well, if you’re that huffed about it we can go through with the evening. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘Where is this Margaret?’

‘She’s outside. Why do you want to know?’

‘I suppose I should pay my respects and let the pair of you away.’

‘Don’t put yourself out.’

‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ but then his anger broke before he opened the door. ‘If that’s all our going out means to you we might as well forget the whole thing.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘We might as well break the whole thing off,’ he said less certainly.

‘That can be easily arranged.’

The door was open and they both came downstairs in silent anger.

Outside, Margaret was leaning against the railing by the bus stop. She was a large country girl, with a mane of black hair and broad athlete’s shoulders. The three made polite, awkward conversation that did not cover over the tenseness till the bus came.

‘I hope you have a nice evening,’ he said as they boarded the bus.

‘That’s what we intend.’ Her lovely face was unflinching, but Margaret waved. He watched them take a seat together on the lower deck and waited to see if they would look back, but they did not.

Rattling coins, he went towards the telephone box at the end of the road to ring round to see if any of his friends were free for the evening.

They did not meet again till two Saturdays later, at the Metropole, as usual at eight. She had a floppy blue hat and dark glasses. Her summer dress was sleeveless, and she had a race card in her long gloved hands.

‘You must have just come from the races.’

‘I was at the Park. I even won some money.’ She smiled her old roguish smile.

‘You must be hungry, then. Why don’t we go somewhere nice to eat?’

‘That’s fine with me,’ she said with all her mocking brightness. ‘I can take you — this evening — with the winnings.’

‘If that suits you. I have money too.’

‘You took long enough in calling,’ she said with a flash of real resentment.

‘It didn’t seem to make much difference to you. It’d be nice if I was wrong. That’s how it seemed.’

‘Where are we going?’ She stopped; that they were adversaries now was in the open.

‘To Bernardo’s. We always had good times there. Even coming from the races you look very beautiful,’ he said by way of appeasement.

The restaurant was just beginning to fill. The blindman was playing the piano at its end, his white stick leaning against the dark varnish. They ate in tenseness and mostly silence, the piano thumping away. Now that he was about to lose her she had never looked so beautiful.

‘You’re not eating much,’ she said when she saw him struggle with the veal.

‘It must be the damned exam,’ he said. ‘It’s starting next week. And, after all, I wasn’t at the races.’

‘That’s true,’ she laughed.

‘I’m sorry about the ridiculous fuss I made a few weeks back,’ he said openly.

‘It’s all right. It’s all over now.’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to come back with me this evening?’ For a wild sensual moment he hoped everything would suddenly be as it had been before.

‘Is it for — the usual?’ she asked slowly.

‘I suppose.’

‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t see any point. Do you?’

‘We’ve often … many times before.’

‘We’ve gone on that way for too long,’ she said.

‘But I love you. And I thought — when things are more settled — we might be married.’

‘No.’ She was looking at him with affection and trying to speak softly and slowly. ‘You must know that the only time things are settled, if they are ever settled, is now. And I’ve had some hard thinking to do since that last evening. You were quite right to be angry. If I was seriously interested in you I’d not have broken the date for someone coming casually to town. There was a time I thought I was getting involved with you, but then you didn’t seem interested, and women are practical. I’m very fond of you, and we’ve had good times, and maybe the good times just went on for too long, when we just should have had a romp, and let it go.’ She spoke as if their life together already belonged to a life that was over.

‘Is there no hope, no hope at all, that it might change?’ he asked with nothing more than an echo of desperation.

Through the sensual caresses, laughter, evenings of pleasure, the instinct had been beginning to assemble a dream, a hope; soon, little by little, without knowing, he would have woken to find that he had fallen in love. We assemble a love as we assemble our life and grow so absorbed in the assembling that we wake in terror at the knowledge that all that we have built is terminal, that, in our pain, we must undo it again.

There had been that moment too that might have been grasped, and had not, and love had died — she had admitted as much. It would have led on to what? To happiness, for a while, or the absence of this present sense of loss, or to some other sense of loss …

He thought he saw that moment, as well that moment now as any other: an evening in O’Connell Street, a Saturday evening like any other, full of the excitement of the herding. She had taken his arm.

‘My young sister is to be engaged tomorrow. Why don’t we drive up? There’s to be a party. And afterwards we could have the weekend on our own,’ and when he answered, ‘It’s the one weekend I can’t,’ and started to explain, he saw the sudden glow go from her face; an impoverishment of calculation replaced it that had made him momentarily afraid. Anyhow, it was all evening now. That crossroad at which they had actually separated had been passed long before in the day.

‘No,’ she said gently. ‘And you’d not be so reckless if I’d said yes. We were both more in love with the idea of falling in love.’

‘Still it’s no fun walking round the world on your own.’

‘It’s not so bad as being with someone you can’t stand after the pleasure has worn off,’ she said as if she were looking past the evening.

‘I give up,’ he said and called for the bill.

‘Ring me sometime,’ she said as she got on the bus outside.