John McGahern - The Collected Stories

When I got back to the house everyone was asleep except a younger sister who had waited up for me. She was reading by the fire, the small black cat on her knee.

‘They’ve all gone to bed,’ she explained. ‘Since you were on the river, they let me wait up for you. Only there’s no tea. I’ve just found out that there’s not a drop of spring water in the house.’

‘I’ll go to the well, then. Otherwise someone will have to go first thing in the morning. You don’t have to wait up for me.’ I was too agitated to go straight to bed and glad of the distraction of any activity.

‘I’ll wait,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait and make the tea when you get back.’

‘I’ll be less than ten minutes.’ The late hour held for her the attractiveness of the stolen.

I walked quickly, swinging the bucket. The whole village seemed dead under a benign moon, but as I passed along the church wall I heard voices. They came from Ryan’s Bar. It was shut, the blinds down, but then I noticed cracks of yellow light along the edges of the big blue blind. They were drinking after hours. I paused to see if I could recognize any of the voices, but before I had time Charlie Ryan hissed, ‘Will you keep your voices down, will yous? At the rate you’re going you’ll soon have the Sergeant out of his bed,’ and the voices quietened to a whisper. Afraid of being noticed in the silence, I passed on to get the bucket of spring water from the well, but the voices were in full song again by the time I returned. I let the bucket softly down in the dust and stood in the shadow of the church wall to listen. I recognized the Master’s slurred voice at once, and then voices of some of the men who worked the sawmill in the wood.

‘That sixth class in 1933 was a great class, Master.’ It was Johnny Connor’s voice, the saw mechanic. ‘I was never much good at the Irish, but I was a terror at the maths, especially the Euclid.’

I shivered as I listened under the church wall. Nineteen thirty-three was the year before I was born.

‘You were a topper, Johnny. You were a topper at the maths,’ I heard the Master’s voice. It was full of authority. He seemed to have no sense at all that he was in danger.

‘Tommy Morahan that went to England was the best of us all in that class,’ another voice took up, a voice I wasn’t able to recognize.

‘He wasn’t half as good as he imagined he was. He suffered from a swelled head,’ Johnny Connor said.

‘Ye were toppers, now. Ye were all toppers,’ the Master said diplomatically.

‘One thing sure is that you made a great job of us, Master. You were a powerful teacher. I remember to this day everything you told us about the Orinoco River.’

‘It was no trouble. Ye had the brains. There are people in this part of the country digging ditches who could have been engineers or doctors or judges or philosophers had they been given the opportunity. But the opportunity was lacking. That was all that was lacking.’ The Master spoke again with great authority.

‘The same again all round, Charlie,’ a voice ordered. ‘And a large brandy for the Master.’

‘Still, we kept sailing, didn’t we, Master? That’s the main thing. We kept sailing.’

‘Ye had the brains. The people in this part of the country had powerful brains.’

‘If you had to pick one thing, Master, what would you put those brains down to?’

‘Will you hush now! The Sergeant wouldn’t even have to be passing outside to hear yous. Soon he’ll be hearing yous down in the barracks,’ Charlie hissed.

There was a lull again in the voices in which a coin fell and seemed to roll across the floor.

‘Well, the people with the brains mostly stayed here. They had to. They had no choice. They didn’t go to the cities. So the brains was passed on to the next generation. Then there’s the trees. There’s the water. And we’re very high up here. We’re practically at the source of the Shannon. If I had to pick on one thing more than another, I’d put it down to that. I’d attribute it to the high ground.’

‘I suppose it won’t be long now till your friend is here,’ the barman said as he held the glass to the light after polishing.

‘If it’s not too wet,’ I said.

‘It’s a bad evening,’ he yawned, the rain drifting across the bandstand and small trees of Fairview Park to stream down the long window.

She showed hardly any signs of rain when she came, lifting the scarf from her black hair. ‘You seem to have escaped the wet.’ The barman was all smiles as he greeted her.

‘I’m afraid I was a bit extravagant and took a taxi,’ she said in the rapid speech she used when she was nervous or simulating confusion to create an effect.

‘What would you like?’

‘Would a hot whiskey be too much trouble?’

‘No trouble at all.’ The barman smiled and lifted the electric kettle. I moved the table to make room for her in the corner of the varnished partition beside the small coal fire in the grate. There was the sound of water boiling, and the scent of cloves and lemon. When I rose to go to the counter for the hot drink, the barman motioned that he would bring it over to the fire.

‘The spoon is really to keep the glass from cracking’ — I nodded towards the steaming glass in front of her on the table. It was a poor attempt to acknowledge the intimacy of the favour. For several months I had been frustrating all his attempts to get to know us, for we had picked Gaffneys because it was out of the way and we had to meet like thieves. Dublin was too small a city to give even our names away.

‘This has just come.’ I handed her the telegram as soon as the barman had resumed his polishing of the glasses. It was from my father, saying it was urgent I go home at once. She read it without speaking. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ll have to go home.’

‘It doesn’t say why .’

‘Of course not. He never gives room.’

‘Is it likely to be serious?’

‘No, but if I don’t go there’s the nagging doubt that it may be.’

‘What are you doing to do, then?’

‘Go, I suppose.’ I looked at her apprehensively.

‘Then that’s goodbye to our poor weekend,’ she said.

We were the same age and had known each other casually for years. I had first met her with Jerry McCredy, a politician in his early fifties, who had a wife and family in the suburbs, and a reputation as a womanizer round the city; but by my time all the other women had disappeared. The black-haired Geraldine was with him everywhere, and he seemed to have fallen in love at last when old, even to the point of endangering his career. I had thought her young and lovely and wasted, but we didn’t meet in any serious way till the night of the Cuban Crisis.

There was a general fever in the city that night, so quiet as to be almost unreal, the streets and faces hushed. I had been wandering from window to window in the area round Grafton Street. On every television set in the windows the Russian ships were still on course for Cuba. There was a growing air that we were walking in the last quiet evening of the world before it was all consumed by fire. ‘It looks none too good.’ I heard her quick laugh at my side as I stood staring at the ships moving silently across the screen.

‘None too good.’ I turned. ‘Are you scared?’

‘Of course I’m scared.’

‘Do you know it’s the first time we’ve ever met on our own?’ I said. ‘Where’s Jerry?’

‘He’s in Cork. At a meeting. One that a loose woman like myself can’t appear at.’ She laughed her quick provocative laugh.

‘Why don’t you come for a drink, then?’

‘I’d love to. With the way things are I was even thinking of going in for one on my own.’