John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘That doesn’t sound too good for you.’

‘It wasn’t. It was a mess.’

They had taken another wrong turning.

It was still raining heavily when they came from the grill. They had one very slow drink in the hotel bar, watching the people drink and come and go before the room and night drew them.

In the morning he asked, ‘What are you doing today?’

‘I’ll go back to the hospital, probably try to get some sleep. I’m on night duty at eight.’

‘We didn’t get much sleep last night.’

‘No, we didn’t,’ she answered gently enough, but making it plain that she had no interest in the reference. ‘What are you doing?’ she changed the subject.

‘There are three buses back. I’ll have to get one of them.’

‘Which one?’

‘Probably the twelve o’clock, since you’re going back to the hospital. When will we meet again?’ he asked in a tone that already took the meeting for granted.

She was half dressed. The vague shape of her thighs shone through the pale slip as she turned towards him. ‘We can’t meet again.’

‘Why not?’ The casualness changed. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. The very opposite.’

‘What’s the matter, then? Why can’t we meet?’

‘I was going to tell you last night and didn’t. I thought it might spoil everything. After all, you were in Maynooth once. I’m joining an Order.’

‘You must be joking.’

‘I was never more serious in my life. I’m joining next Thursday … the Medical Missionaries.’ She had about her that presence that had attracted him in the dancehall; she stood free of everything around her, secure in her own light.

‘I can’t believe you.’

‘It’s true,’ she said.

‘But the whole thing is a lie, a waste, a fabrication.’

‘It’s not for me and it wasn’t once for you.’

‘But I believed then.’

‘Don’t you think I do?’ she said sharply.

‘To mouth Hail Marys and Our Fathers all of your life.’

‘You know that’s cheap. It’ll be mostly work. I’ll nurse as I nurse now. In two years’ time I’ll probably be sent to medical school. The Order has a great need of its own doctors.’

‘Wasn’t last night a strange preparation for your new life?’

‘I don’t see much wrong with it.’

‘From your point of view, wasn’t it a sin?’ He was angry now.

‘Not much of a one, if it was. I’ve known women who spent the night before their marriage with another man. It was an end to their free or single life.’

‘And I was the goodbye, the shake-hands?’

‘I didn’t plan it. I was attracted to you. We were free. That’s the way it fell. If I did it after joining, it would be different. It would be a very great sin.’

‘Perhaps we could be married?’ he pressed blindly.

‘No. You wouldn’t ask so lightly if we could.’

‘We wouldn’t have much at first but we would have one another and we could work,’ he pursued.

‘No. I’m sorry. I like you very much, but it cannot be. My mind has been made up for a long time.’

‘Well, one last time, then,’ he cut her short.

‘Hadn’t we the whole night?’

‘One last time.’ His hands insisted: and as soon as it was over he was sorry, left with less than if it had never taken place.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

After they had paid downstairs, they did not want to eat in the hotel, though the grill room was serving breakfast. They went to one of the big plastic and chrome places on O’Connell Street. They ate slowly in uneasy silence.

‘I hope you’ll forgive me, if there’s anything to forgive,’ she said after a long time.

‘I was going to ask the same thing. There’s nothing to forgive. I wanted to see you again, to go on seeing you. I never thought I’d have the luck to meet someone so open … so unafraid.’ He was entangled in his own words before he’d finished.

‘I’m not like that at all.’ She laughed as she hadn’t for a long time. ‘I’m a coward. I’m frightened of next week. I’m frightened by most things.’

‘Why don’t you take an address that’ll always find me in case you change your mind?’

‘I’ll not change.’

‘I thought that once too.’

‘No. I’ll not. I can’t,’ she said, but he still wrote the address and slipped it in her pocket.

‘You can throw it away as soon as I’m out of sight.’

As they rose he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

They now leaned completely on those small acts of ceremony that help us better out of life than any drug. He paid at the cash desk and waited afterwards while she fixed her scarf, smiled ruefully as he stood aside to allow her the inside of the stairs, opened the large swing-door at the bottom of the steps. They walked slowly to the bus stop. At the stop they tried to foretell the evening’s weather by the dark cloudy appearance of the sky towards the west. The only thing that seemed certain was that there’d be more rain. They shook hands as the bus came in. He waited until all the passengers had got on and it had moved away.

The river out beyond the Custom House, the straight quays, seemed to stretch out in the emptiness after she had gone. In my end is my beginning, he recalled. In my beginning is my end, his and hers, mine and thine. It seemed to stretch out, complete as the emptiness, endless as a wedding ring. He knew it like his own breathing. There might well be nothing, but she was still prepared to live by that one thing, to will it true.

Thinking of her, he found himself walking eagerly towards the Busarus … but almost as quickly his walking slowed. His steps grew hesitant, as if he was thinking of turning back. He knew that no matter how eagerly he found himself walking in any direction it could only take him to the next day and the next.

The summer Annie May Moran came to work for Mrs Kirkwood was the great year of St Michael’s football. The team had reached the Final of the Senior Cup for the second year running. Eddie Mac was their star, their finest forward. He worked for the Kirkwoods and lived in the three-roomed herdsman’s cottage at the end of the yard, its galvanized roof sprayed the same shade of green as the stables. The two Kirkwoods, father and son, old William and young Master William, went to Roscommon to watch the Final. They barely understood the game and were not touched by the wild fever that emptied the countryside on that late August Sunday: ‘We went because Eddie was playing. His father would have enjoyed this day, had he stayed.’

Annie May helped Mrs Kirkwood set the dinner table in the front room that afternoon while the game was being played. Mrs Kirkwood went to particular care with the linen and silver, and the best set of bone china was on display. The Nutleys of Oakport, the oldest and last of her local friends, were coming to dinner that evening. When she was satisfied with the arrangement of the room and had checked the food, she took her book and sat in the rocking chair in the library, where, looking out on the lawn and white paling and the winding avenue of copper and green beech, she rocked herself to sleep as she did every day at this hour.

Exploding cans of carbide, random shouts and cheers and whistles as fires were lit on the hills and on every cross on the roadways woke her early. St Michael’s had won the Senior Cup for the first time since its founding. She rose and came down to Annie May in the kitchen. ‘It’s an unmitigated disaster,’ she confided to the servant girl. ‘It was bad enough last year, and they lost. What’ll it be like now that they have won?’

‘Eddie was the hero,’ William Kirkwood announced when they returned from Roscommon. ‘The two goals he scored in the second half won the game — it broke the other team’s heart. They carried him on their shoulders all around the field with the cup at the end.’ Annie May coloured as he spoke. She was already in love with the young herdsman who had yet to acknowledge her presence in the house.