John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come: thy will be done on earth,’ broke suddenly on his lips as he gathered himself to catch up with the girl so as not to have to come into the village on his own.

As well as a railway ticket they gave me a letter before I left the Home to work for Moran. They warned me to give the letter unopened to Moran, which was why I opened it on the train; it informed him that since I was a ward of state if I caused trouble or ran away he was to contact the guards at once. I tore it up, since it occurred to me that I might well cause trouble or run away, resolving to say I lost it if asked, but he did not ask for any letter.

Moran and his wife treated me well. The food was more solid than at the Home, a roast always on Sundays, and when the weather grew hard they took me to the town and bought me wellingtons and an overcoat and a cap with flaps that came down over the ears. After the day’s work when Moran had gone to the pub, I was free to sit at the fire while Mrs Moran knitted, and listen to the wireless — what I enjoyed most were the plays — and Mrs Moran told me she was knitting a pullover for me for Christmas. Sometimes she asked me about life at the Home and when I’d tell her she’d sigh, ‘You must be very glad to be with us instead,’ and I would tell her, which was true, that I was. I usually went to bed before Moran came back from the pub, as they often quarrelled then, and I considered I had no place in that part of their lives.

Moran made his living by buying cheap branches or uncommercial timber the sawmills couldn’t use and cutting them up to sell as firewood. I delivered the timber with an old jennet Moran had bought from the tinkers. The jennet squealed, a very human squeal, any time a fire of branches was lit, and ran, about the only time he did run, to stand in rigid contentment with his nostrils in the thick of the wood smoke. When Moran was in good humour it amused him greatly to light a fire to see the jennet’s excitement at the prospect of smoke.

There was no reason this life shouldn’t have gone on for long but for a stupid wish on my part, which set off an even more stupid wish in Mrs Grey, and what happened has struck me ever since as usual when people look to each other for their happiness or whatever it is called. Mrs Grey was Moran’s best customer. She’d come from America and built the huge house on top of Mounteagle after her son had been killed in aerial combat over Italy.

The thaw overhead in the bare branches had stopped the evening we filled that load for Mrs Grey. There was no longer the dripping on the dead leaves, the wood clamped in the silence of white frost except for the racket some bird made in the undergrowth. Moran carefully built the last logs above the crates of the cart and I threw him the bag of hay that made the load look bigger than it was. ‘Don’t forget to call at Murphy’s for her paraffin,’ he said. ‘No, I’ll not forget.’ ‘She’s bound to tip you well this Christmas. We could use money for the Christmas.’ He’d use it to pour drink down his gullet. ‘Must be time to be moving,’ I said. ‘It’ll be night before you’re there,’ he answered.

The cart rocked over the roots between the trees, cold steel of the bridle ring in the hand close to the rough black lips, steam of the breath wasting on the air to either side. We went across the paddocks to the path round the lake, the wheels cutting two tracks on the white stiff grass, crush of the grass yielding to the iron. I had to open the wooden gate to the pass. The small shod hooves wavered between the two ridges of green inside the wheeltracks on the pass, the old body swaying to each drive of the shafts as the wheels fell from rut to rut.

The lake was frozen over, a mirror fouled by white blotches of the springs, and rose streaks from the sun were impaled on the firs of Oakport across the bay.

The chainsaw started up in the wood again. He’d saw while there was light. ‘No joke to make a living, a drink or two for some relief, all this ballsing. May be better if we stayed in bed, conserve our energy, eat less,’ but in spite of all he said he went on buying the branches cheap from McAnnish after the boats had taken the trunks down the river to the mill.

I tied the jennet to the chapel gate and crossed to Murphy’s shop.

‘I want Mrs Grey’s paraffin.’

The shop was full of men. They sat on the counter or on wooden fruit boxes and upturned buckets along the walls. They used to trouble me at first. I supposed it little different from going into a shop in a strange country without its language, but they learned they couldn’t take a rise out of me, that was their phrase. They used to lob tomatoes at the back of my head in the hope of some reaction, but they left me mostly alone when they saw none was forthcoming. If I felt anything for them it was a contempt tempered by fear: I was here, and they were there.

‘You want her paraffin, do you? I know the paraffin I’d give her if I got your chance,’ Joe Murphy said from the centre of the counter where he presided, and a loyal guffaw rose from around the walls.

‘Her proper paraffin,’ someone shouted, and it drew even more applause, and when it died a voice asked, ‘Before you get off the counter, Joe, throw us an orange.’

Joe stretched to the shelf and threw the orange to the man who sat on a bag of Spanish onions. As he stretched forward to catch the fruit the red string bag collapsed and he came heavily down on the onions. ‘You want to bruise those onions with your dirty awkward arse. Will you pay for them now, will you?’ Joe shouted as he swung his thick legs down from the counter.

‘Everybody’s out for their onions these days.’ The man tried to defend himself with a nervous laugh as he fixed the string bag upright and changed his seat to an orange box.

‘You’ve had your onions: now pay for them.’

‘Make him pay for his onions,’ they shouted.

‘You must give her her paraffin first.’ Joe took the tin, and went to the barrel raised on flat blocks in the corner, and turned the copper tap.

‘Now give her the proper paraffin. It’s Christmas time,’ Joe said again as he screwed the cap tight on the tin, the limp black hair falling across the bloated face.

‘Her proper paraffin,’ the approving cheer followed me out of the door.

‘He never moved a muscle, the little fucker. Those homeboys are a bad piece of work,’ I heard with much satisfaction as I stowed the tin of paraffin securely among the logs of the cart. Ice over the potholes of the road was catching the first stars. Lights of bicycles — it was a confession night — hesitantly approached out of the night. Though exposed in the full glare of their lamps I was unable to recognize the bicyclists as they pedalled past in dark shapes behind their lamps, and this made raw the fear I’d felt but had held down in the shop. I took a stick and beat the reluctant jennet into pulling the load uphill as fast as he was able.

After I’d stacked the logs in the fuel shed I went and knocked on the back door to see where they wanted me to put the paraffin. Mrs Grey opened the door.

‘It’s the last load until after Christmas,’ I said as I put the tin down.

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ She smiled and held out a pound note.

‘I’d rather not take it.’ It was there the first mistake was made, playing for higher stakes.

‘You must have something. Besides the firewood you’ve brought us so many messages from the village that we don’t know what we’d have done without you.’

‘I don’t want money.’

‘Then what would you like me to give you for Christmas?’

‘Whatever you’d prefer to give me.’ I thought prefer was well put for a homeboy.