John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘Right, then.’ He waved and knew neither of them would. They had played at a game of life, and had not fallen, and were now as indifferent to one another, outside the memory of pleasure, as if they were both already dead to one another. If they were not together in the evening how could they ever have been so in the morning …

And if she had come to him instead of leaving him, those limbs would never reach whomever they were going to …

And why should we wish the darkness harm, it is our element; or curse the darkness because we are doomed to love in it, and die …

And those that move along the edges can see it so until they fall.

MORNING

‘What does your friend do for a living?’ the man asked the blonde woman in front of him after Marion, an enormous ungainly girl, had gone to the Ladies in Bernardo’s.

‘She’s not a friend. In fact, she’s more than a friend. She’s a client. A star. A pop star.’ The woman smiled as she drew slowly on her cigarette. ‘You’re behind the times. You see, I’m here to bring you up to date.’

‘But how can she be a pop star?’

‘You mean because she’s ugly? That doesn’t matter. That helps. The public’s tired of long, pale, beautiful slenders. Ugliness and energy — that’s what’s wanted now, and she has a good voice. She can belt them out.’

‘Does she have men friends and all that?’

‘As many as she wants. Proposals. Everything a woman’s supposed to want.’

‘She’s certainly not what you’d call beautiful.’

‘Publicity makes her beautiful. It moves her closer to the sun. In fact, it is the sun and still has its worshippers.’

‘It doesn’t make her so to me,’ the man said doggedly, ‘though I think you are beautiful.’

‘What is it anyhow? A good clothes rack or flesh rack? I don’t know.’

‘Whatever it is, you have it.’ He changed. ‘It doesn’t look as if Peter will come back now.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Peter isn’t trustworthy. I wish they’d let the blindman go home,’ she said as he struck up another number on the piano.

‘I suppose, for them, it’s the hopeful hours.’ The man referred to the large noisy table in the centre of the restaurant. They had come from a party and bribed the blindman to play on after he had risen at midnight to catch his usual garage bus to Inchicore.

‘Do you have anything to do with Peter?’

‘How?’ she asked sharply.

‘Sleep with him?’

She laughed. ‘I’ve never even thought of Peter that way. He’s a contact. In the trade,’ and without warning she leaned across the table and placed the burning tip of the cigarette against the back of the man’s hand.

‘What did you do that for?’ he asked angrily.

‘I felt like it. I suppose I should be sorry.’

‘No,’ he changed. ‘Not if you come home with me.’

‘To sleep with you?’ she parodied.

‘That would be best of all but it’s not important. We can spend the morning together,’ he said eagerly.

‘All right.’ She nodded.

They were both uneasy after the agreement. They had left one level and had not entered any other.

‘Do you think I should go to see if anything’s the matter with Marion?’

‘Maybe. Wait a little,’ he said.

Marion was pale when she came back. ‘I’m afraid I’m not used to the wine,’ she apologized.

‘I’m sorry, but we can go now. Do you think you’ll be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.

‘Anyhow, you’ll both see Peter tomorrow. He said he’d definitely be at the reception.’

The last thing their eyes rested on before they went through the door the Italian manager was holding open was the blindman’s cane leaning against the side of the piano.

‘Do you think they’ll make the poor man play all night?’ she asked.

‘He seems satisfied. I even heard them arranging for a taxi to take him home. I suppose we too should be thinking of a taxi.’

‘I’d rather walk, if that’s all right.’

They walked slowly towards the hotel. The night was fine but without moon or stars. Just before they got to the hotel, the man shook hands with Marion, and the two women walked together to the hotel door. They stood a while in conversation there before the star went in and the blonde woman turned back towards the man.

‘It always makes me uncomfortable. Being part of the couple, leaving the single person alone,’ he said.

‘The single person is usually glad to be left alone.’

‘I know that but it doesn’t stop the feeling.’ He had the same feeling passing hospitals late at night.

‘Anyhow, you’ve had your wish. We’re together,’ the woman said, and they kissed for the first time. They crossed to the taxi rank facing the railings of the Green, and they did not speak in the taxi. What hung between them might be brutal and powerful, but it was as frail as the flesh out of which it grew, for any endurance. They had chosen one another because of the empty night, and the wrong words might betray them early, making one hateful to the other; but even the right words, if there were right words, had not the power to force it. It had to grow or wither like a plant or flower. What they needed most was patience, luck, and that twice-difficult thing, to be lucky in one another, and at the same time, and to be able to wait for that time.

‘Will I switch on the light?’ he asked her as he let her into the flat.

‘Whatever you like.’

‘Then I’d rather not.’

After they had kissed he said, ‘There’s my room and the spare room. I don’t mind if you think it too soon and use the spare room.’

‘Wait,’ she said softly, and her arms leaned heavily round his shoulders, as if she had forgotten him, and was going over her life to see if she could gather it into this one place. Suddenly she felt him trembling. She pulled him towards her.

‘Do you bring many people back like this?’ she asked close to morning, almost proprietorially.

‘No. Not for ages.’

‘Why?’

‘First you have to find a person who’ll consent,’ he half joked. ‘And there’s not much use after a while unless there seems a chance of something more.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of it going on, I suppose.’

There was a silence in which a moth blundering about the half-darkness overhead was too audible.

‘And you, have you men?’ he asked awkwardly.

‘No. Until recently I had one man.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. He was married. The man in question had a quite awful dilemma, and he suffered, how he suffered, especially with me. You see, he was torn between his wife and me, and he could not make up his mind. Women are, I think, more primal than men. They don’t bother too much about who pays the bill as long as they get what they want. So I gave him an ultimatum. And when he still couldn’t make up his mind I left him. That must sound pretty poor stuff.’

‘No. It sounds true.’

That hard as porcelain singleness of women, seeming sometimes to take pleasure in cruelty, was a part of the beauty.

‘Would you like to be married?’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘I suppose I would.’

‘You know that speech about those who are married or kind to their friends. They become olives, pomegranate, mulberry, flowers, precious stones, eminent stars.’

‘I’d rather stay as I am,’ she laughed.

‘I suppose it is all in life.’ He drew her towards him.

‘We didn’t choose it any more than those before us or those who may come after us.’

When they rose and washed in the flat in all its daylight, it seemed as if it was not only a new day but the beginning of a new life. The pictures, the plates, the table in its stolidity seemed to have been set askew by the accidental night, to want new shapes, to look comical in their old places. The books on the wall seemed to belong to an old relative to whom one did not even owe a responsibility of affection. Gaily one could pick or discard among them, choosing only those useful to the new. For, like a plant, the old outer leaves would have to lie withered for new green shoots to push upwards at the heart.