John McGahern - The Collected Stories

‘How do you know that?’ I was asking questions now simply to gain time to think.

‘How do I know?’ he said with manic grievance. ‘Already the place is disappearing fast beneath our feet. Only a few weeks back the tractor was missing. Her damned nephew had it. Without as much as by my leave. They forgot to inform me. And she never goes near them that there’s not something missing from the house.’

‘That’s hardly fair. It’s usual to share things round in the country. She always brought more back than she took.’

I remembered the baskets of raspberries and plums she used to bring back from their mountain farm.

‘That’s right. Don’t take my word for it,’ he shouted. ‘Soon you’ll know.’

‘But what’s this got to do with the telegram?’ I asked, and he quietened.

‘I was in to see Callan the solicitor. That’s why I sent the telegram. If I transfer the place to you before that Act becomes law, then the Act can’t touch us. Do you get me now?’

I did — too well. He would disinherit Rose by signing the place over to me. I would inherit both Rose and the place if he died.

‘You won’t have it signed over to you, then?’

‘No, I won’t. Have you said any of this to Rose?’

‘Of course I haven’t. Do you take me for a fool or something? Are you saying to me for the last time that you won’t take it?’ And when I wouldn’t answer he said with great bitterness, ‘I should have known. You don’t even have respect for your own blood,’ and muttering, walked away towards the cattle gathered between the stone wall and the first of the walnut trees. Once or twice he moved as if he might turn back, but he did not. We did not speak any common language.

We avoided each other that evening, the tension making us prisoners of every small movement, and the next day I tried to slip quietly away.

‘Is it going you are?’ Rose said sharply when she saw me about to leave.

‘That’s right, Rose.’

‘You shouldn’t pass any heed on your father. You should let it go with him. He won’t change his ways now. You’re worse than he is, not to let it go with him.’

For a moment I wanted to ask her, ‘Do you know that he wanted to leave you at my sweet mercy after his death?’ but I knew she would answer, ‘What does that matter? You know he gets these ideas. You should let it go with him’; and when I said, ‘Goodbye, Rose,’ she did not answer.

As the train trundled across the bridges into Dublin and by the grey back of Croke Park, all I could do was stare. The weekend was over like a life. If it had happened differently it would still be over. Differently, we would have had our walks and drinks, made love in the curtained rooms, experimented in the ways of love, pretending we were taming instinct, imagining we were getting more out of it than had been intended, and afterwards … Where were we to go from there, our pleasure now its grinning head? And it would be over and not over. I had gone home instead, a grotesquerie of other homegoings, and it too was over now.

She would have met him at the airport, they would have had dinner, and if their evenings remained the same as when I used to meet them together they would now be having drinks in some bar. As the train came slowly into Amiens Street, I suddenly wanted to find them, to see us all together. They were not in any of the Grafton Street bars, and I was on the point of giving up the impulse — with gratitude that I hadn’t been able to satisfy it — when I found them in a hotel lounge by the river. They were sitting at the counter, picking at a bowl of salted peanuts between their drinks. He seemed glad to see me, getting off his stool, ‘I was just saying here how long it is since we last saw you,’ in his remorseless slow voice, as if my coming might lighten an already heavy-hanging evening. He was so friendly that I could easily have asked him how his interview had gone, amid the profusion of my lies, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to know.

‘I’ve just come from London. We’ve had dinner at the airport.’ He began to tell me all that I already knew.

‘And will you take this job?’ I asked after he had told me at length about the weekend, without any attempt to select between details, other than to put the whole lot in.

‘It’s all arranged. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. I leave in three weeks’ time,’ he said.

‘Congratulations,’ I proffered uneasily. ‘But do you have any regrets about leaving?’

‘No. None whatever. I’ve done my marching stint and speeching stint. Let the young do that now. It’s my time to sit back. There comes a time of life when your grapefruit in the morning is important.’

‘And will her ladyship go with you?’

‘I’ll see how the land lies first, and then she’ll follow. And by the way,’ he began to shake with laughter and gripped my arm so that it hurt, ‘don’t you think to get up to anything with her while I’m gone.’

‘Now that you’ve put it into my head I might try my hand.’ I looked for danger but he was only enjoying his own joke, shaking with laughter as he rose from the bar stool. ‘I better spend a penny on the strength of that.’

‘That — was — mean,’ she said without looking up.

‘I suppose it was. I couldn’t help it.’

‘You knew we’d be around.’

‘Will you see me tomorrow?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Anyhow, I’ll be there.’

‘How did your weekend in the country go?’ she asked sarcastically.

‘It went as usual, nothing but the usual,’ I echoed her own sarcasm.

McCredy was still laughing when he came back. ‘I’ve just been thinking that you two should be the young couple and me the uncle, and if you do decide to get up to something you must ask Uncle’s dispensation first,’ and he clapped me on the back.

‘Well, I better start by asking now,’ I said quickly in case my dismay would show, and he let out a bellow of helpless laughter. He must have been drinking, for he put his arms round both of us, ‘I just love you two young people,’ and tears of laughter slipped from his eyes. ‘Hi, barman, give us another round before I die.’

I sat inside the partition in Gaffneys the next evening as on all other evenings, the barman as usual polishing glasses, nobody but the two of us in the bar.

‘Your friend seems a bit later than usual this evening,’ he said.

‘I don’t think she’ll come this evening,’ I said, and he looked at me inquiringly. ‘She went down the country for the weekend. She was doubtful if she’d get back.’

‘I hope there’s nothing wrong …’

‘No. Her mother is old. You know the way.’ I was making for the safety of the roomy clichés.

‘That’s the sadness. You don’t know whether to look after them or your own life.’

Before any pain of her absence could begin to hang about the opening and closing doors as the early evening drinkers bustled in, I got up and left; and yet her absence was certainly less painful than the responsibility of a life together. But what then of love? Love flies out the window, I had heard them say.

‘She’ll not come now,’ I said.

‘No. It doesn’t seem,’ he said as he took my glass with a glance in which suspicion equalled exasperation.

We did not meet till several weeks later. We met in Grafton Street, close to where we had met the first night. A little nervously she agreed to come for a drink with me. She looked quite beautiful, a collar of dark fur pinned to her raincoat.

‘Jerry’s in Sierra Leone now,’ she said when I brought the drinks.

‘I know. I read it in the papers.’

‘He rang me last night,’ she said. ‘He was in the house of a friend — a judge. I could hear music in the background. I think they were a bit tight. The judge insisted he speak to me too. He had an Oxford accent. Very posh but apparently he’s as black as the ace of spades,’ she laughed. I could see that she treasured the wasteful call more than if it had been a gift of brilliant stones.