John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing much. Of another morning. A Paris morning, opening shutters, a water truck was going past, and behind came four Algerians with long-handled brooms.’

‘Were you alone or with someone?’ He was ashamed of the first pang of irrational jealousy.

‘Actually, I was alone. I suppose one usually is those mornings.’ Her gravity, much like a small child’s, took all the light to itself.

They had come from four separate people, two men and two women, lying together in two separate nights; and those two nights were joined in the night they had left, had grown into the morning.

She was not garlanded by farms or orchards, by any house by the sea, by neither judges nor philosophers. She stood as she was, belonging to the morning, as they both hoped to belong to the evening. They could not possess the morning, no more than they could disagree with it or go against its joy.

She was wearing what she wore at the dinner while the blindman played, a dress of blue denim, buttoned down the front, and on her stockingless feet were thonged sandals.

‘What are you going to do today?’

‘I have to go to the hotel and then to the reception. I suppose we’ll see the busy Peter there. After that I’m free. And you?’

‘I’m free all day.’

‘Maybe we’ll begin to learn a little more about one another then.’

‘As long as we know it’ll be more of nothing. We know hardly anything now and we may never be as well off.’

They would have to know that they could know nothing to go through the low door of love, the door that was the same doorway between the self and the other everywhere.

‘Well, anyhow we have to face the day,’ she said, dispelling it in one movement; and they took one another’s hands as they went to meet the day, the day already following them, and all about them.

The wind blew the stinging rain from the Gut, where earlier in the bright weather of the summer the Sergeant had sat in the tarred boat, anchored by a rope to an old Ford radiator that clung to the weeds outside the rushes, and watched taut line after taut line cut like cheesewire through the water as hooked roach after hooked roach made a last surge towards the freedom of the open lake before landing slapping on the floorboards. The wind blew the rain from the Gut against the black limestone of the Quarry, where on the wet tar, its pools ruffling in the wet wind, the Sergeant and the young State Surveyor measured the scene of the road accident, both with their collars up and hatted against the rain, the black plastic chinstrap a shining strip on the Sergeant’s jaw. ‘What age was he?’ the Surveyor asked, as he noted the last measurement in his official notebook and put the tapewheel in his pocket.

‘Eighteen. Wheeling his bicycle up the hill on his way to Carrick, apparently for a haircut, when bang — into the next world via the bonnet, without as much as by your leave.’

‘Will you be able to get manslaughter? From the measurements she wouldn’t appear to have a leg to stand on.’

‘Not a snowballs’s chance in hell. The family’s too well in. You see the wooden cross on the wall there his parents put up, two sticks no more, and they’re already complaining: the poor woman has to pass it twice a day on the way to her school and back, and the cross disturbs her, brings back memories, when bygones should be let to be bygones. Her defence is that the sun blinded her as she came round the Quarry. She’ll lose her licence for six months and there’ll be an order from the bench for the bend to be properly signposted.’

The Surveyor whistled as he turned towards his car in the forecourt of the Quarry, his back to the rain sweeping from the mouth of the Gut.

‘They’re poor, his parents, then?’

‘As mountain snipe.’

‘Fortunately, Sergeant, you and I don’t have to concern ourselves with the justice or injustice. Only with the accurate presentation of the evidence. And I have to thank you for those drawings. They are as near professional as makes no difference. I wish all my jobs could be made as easy.’

‘I was good at figures at school,’ the Sergeant said awkwardly.

‘Why don’t you let me drive you back in the rain?’

‘There’s the bike.’

‘That’s no problem. I can dump it on the back.’

An evening suit hung in the back of the car, a scarf of white silk draped round the shoulders. On the seat lay an old violin-case.

‘You play the fiddle?’ the Sergeant noticed, glad to be in out of the rain beating on the windscreen.

‘Indeed I do. The violin travels with me everywhere. Do you have much taste for music?’

‘When I was young. At the dances. “Rakes of Mallow”. “Devil Among the Tailors”, jigs and reels.’

‘I had to choose once, when I was at university, between surveying and a career in music. I’m afraid I chose security.’

‘We all have to eat.’

‘Anyhow, I’ve never regretted it, except in the usual sentimental moments. In fact, I think if I had to depend on it for my daily bread it might lose half its magic.’

‘Is it old, the fiddle? The case looks old.’

‘Very old, but I have had it only four years. It has its story. I’m afraid it’s a longish story.’

‘I’d like to hear it.’

‘I was in Avignon in France an evening an old Italian musician was playing between the café tables, and the moment I heard its tone I knew I’d have to have it. I followed him from café to café until he’d finished for the evening, and then invited him to join me over a glass of wine. Over the wine I asked him if he’d sell. First he refused. Then I asked him to name some price he couldn’t afford not to take. I’m afraid to tell you the price, it was so high. I tried to haggle but it was no use. The last thing he wanted was to sell, but because of his family he couldn’t afford to refuse that price if I was prepared to pay it. With the money he could get proper medical treatment — I couldn’t completely follow his French — for his daughter, who was consumptive or something, and he’d do the best he could about the cafés with an ordinary violin. I’m afraid I paid up on the spot, but the experts who have examined it since say it was dead cheap at the price, that it might even be a genuine Stradivarius.’

Streets of Avignon, white walls of the royal popes in the sun, glasses of red wine and the old Italian musician playing between the café tables in the evening, a girl dying of consumption, and the sweeping rain hammering on the windscreen.

‘It was in Avignon, wasn’t it, if I have the old church history right,’ the Sergeant said slowly, ‘that those royal popes had their palaces in the schism? Some of them, by all accounts, were capable of a fandango or two besides their Hail Marys.’

‘The papal palaces are still there. Avignon is wonderful. You must go there. Some of those wonderful Joe Walsh Specials put it within all our reaches. The very sound of the name makes me long for summer.’

‘I’d love to hear you play on that fiddle.’

‘I’m sure that’s easily arranged. After all, there’s only a few more petty things to check, and then our work is done for the day.’

‘We can play in the barracks, then. There’s no one there. Biddy can get us something to eat, and then you can play.’

‘That doesn’t matter at all.’

‘Still, the inner man has to be seen to too. Biddy’s my housekeeper. She’s a good soul, but I must warn you she’s deaf as a post and shouts.’

‘Let that be the least of our worries.’ The young Surveyor smiled indulgently as the car ground to a stop on the barracks’ gravel. ‘Do you find time hard to kill in this place?’ he asked as he got out of the car.