The Dark

by John McGahern

  “How much money have you, Joan?”

  “A pound and two shillings. I bought these sandals and the dress and you can’t save much out of ten shillings,” she was apologizing about the sandals and the dress she wore, that you hadn’t even noticed.

  “No. I just wanted to know. I had enough to get both of us home tomorrow but we have plenty now.”

  “To go home tomorrow?”

  “Yes—both of us. You couldn’t stay on in that hole?”

  “But what’ll he say?”

  “Our father?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’ll say nothing. We’ll tell him what happened, that you couldn’t stay on, that’s all. It doesn’t matter much what he says.”

  “Who’ll tell them in the shop?”

  “I will, if you want, unless you’d sooner do it yourself.”

  “No. You’ll tell. I’m afraid. Do you think will everything be alright?”

  “It’ll be alright.”

  The grass margin a short way beyond the last of the houses was an easy place to rest, and not many people or cars passed.

  “Does Father Gerald know you’re going tomorrow?”

  “No. I’ll tell him when I get back.”

  “I thought you were staying more than a week?”

  “I’m not now. I’m going tomorrow.”

  “Are you not going to be a priest?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think so. What made you think I was ever going to be a priest anyhow?”

  “You were always very quiet or something,” and that caused you to start, you didn’t think yourself very quiet.

  You didn’t know very much about yourself so. The mirror was before you now, temptation to probe to see other pictures of you in her mind, but it was no use, she had her life as well as you, every life had too much importance and unimportance to be only a walking mirror for another.

  You walked slowly back past the bungalows and then the shops. Ryan was behind the counter.

  “So you got back, did you,” he greeted. “Mrs. Ryan is inside. I think she expects you to stay to tea. Come on inside anyhow.”

  Inside she was laying the table for tea.

  “I was cross when I heard you came and I wasn’t told. You’ll stay to tea. The children said too they’d like very much for you to stay,” she invited.

  “I’m sorry. I left word that I’d be back for tea and Father Malone may be waiting for me. But thank you very much,”

  “That seems a shame …” she was beginning.

  “I just want to tell you that Joan is coming home with me tomorrow,” you had to grow tense to force it out, but you remembered the bathroom.

  Her eyes searched for her husband’s, but they told her nothing, except to deal with the situation herself, she was the dominant one.

  “That’s a bit of a surprise.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “People usually give more notice than that.”

  “I’m sorry but she has to come with me tomorrow.”

  “You’re being very sorry but what has she to say for herself?”

  “What I say,” and you felt your control of yourself slip, you had to cut it short before you were driven to attack. “I’m sorry. I must go. Be ready tomorrow, I’ll call for you before the bus time.”

  She stood without any attempt to make response. The woman had grown swollen with suppressed anger. You didn’t know whether you said good-bye again or sorry before you left, you were too anxious to be gone, before your control slipped.

  You went the same road back, rage seething, and failure. People had to go among people, they needed other people, yet they couldn’t be easy, all the little hatchets that came up. Wouldn’t it be better for them to stay alone in the fields and rooms, and let the world come or pass in whatever shape it would? Why couldn’t the Ryans listen to you tell them that Joan was leaving and no more, instead of driving knives at you, and why had you the same urge to knife them back? Then you couldn’t think when you imagined that meek bastard alone with her in the bathroom.

  All the strength, the will to go on, was drained by the quarrel and what she’d said, nothing but anger and dust and despair, always the same after all these useless conflicts with your father or here. You felt close to the end, feverish and worn, the day’s sun dying above you into the west, and then you tried to walk quicker, watching your shoes swing over the road, how so much dust had dulled their shine since you had left.

  16

  THE CAR WAS ONE SIDE OF THE CACTUS, THE PRIEST SITTING IN one of the black leather armchairs in the room with a newspaper. He would not look up. He turned each page with as much crackle as he could. He was annoyed, and what did you care, you wished you could go away out of his annoyance, leave him there, you’d enough turmoil and conflict for one day.

  “Did you eat yet?” he consented to ask at last out of the newspaper, you weren’t in the room to him till then though you’d been standing stupidly for five minutes inside the door.

  “No, father.”

  “Then we’d better have it so now. I delayed mine.”

  He rose, folded the newspaper and let it fall back in the chair, and he went out and struck the gong in the hall. You followed him out to where the table was laid in the dining-room. Almost immediately John came with the soup.

  “I more or less understood you were to stay about the house today,” he brought out his grievance as he sprinkled salt and pepper on his soup.

  “Yes, but I wanted to see Joan. I didn’t think it would be any harm.”

  “Were you not interfering with her work? If your day was free hers wasn’t. Could you not have waited for the two of us to go in together to see her?”

  He was using the same pressure of the night before. He was the one who decided—or was he. He’d not have his own way so easy this evening. You didn’t answer.

  “And what did you do in town?” he had to ask.

  “Mr. Ryan gave her time off. We went out the town for a walk.”

  This evening would not be his as last night was.

  “She’s coming home with me tomorrow.”

  “She’s coming home with you tomorrow,” he lifted his face, puzzled and ironic emphasis on every word.

  “She wasn’t happy there. She wants to come with me tomorrow.”

  “This news is quite sudden I must say. How is she not happy?”

  “They interfered with her.”

  “Who?”

  “Ryan did.”

  “How did he interfere?”

  “Sexually.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “No, but she told me. She’d hardly want to tell lies.”

  “How did she say he was interfering?”

  “He attacked her in the bathroom once. There were several other things.”

  “Why didn’t this come out before?”

  “She was frightened. She was afraid to tell.”

  “Did you attack the Ryans with this?”

  “No. I told them she was leaving with me tomorrow. I gave no reasons.”

  “For that relief much thanks at least.”

  John came with the main course. He took away the empty soup bowls. There was silence while the priest portioned the food out of the dish.

  “You’ve decided to go home tomorrow?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “You’ve more or less made up your mind about your life so?”

  You’d never make up your mind but it was simpler to pretend you had.

  “I don’t think I’m able for to be a priest, father.”

  Another slow interval of silence, sharp noises of knives or forks on the plate, a thrush or something singing beyond the open window out in the graveyard.

  “May God bless your life no matter what its way is all that’s left to me to say so,” he said, and nothing had prepared you for it, he went on, he spoke very slow: “I was afraid today that maybe I had pressed you too hard last night. There never was such need of priests in the world. B
ut no priest at all is better than a bad priest. You may not be able to save your soul as a priest. There are far greater stresses, greater responsibility, greater temptations than in the ordinary or natural way of life. You stand on a height. And heights were never safe places for humans. You can fall, you can make worry over your health or car fill the place of a wife and children. Did you ever hear of the word bourgeoisie?”

  “Yes, father. I did.”

  “It comes out of French strangely enough. Most of us in Ireland will soon be that, fear of the poor-house is gone, even the life your father brought you up on won’t last hardly twenty years more. A priest who ministers to the bourgeoisie becomes more a builder of churches, bigger and more comfortable churches, and schools than a preacher of the Word of God. The Society influences the Word far more than the Word influences the Society. If you are a good priest you have to walk a dangerous plank between committees on one hand and Truth or Justice on the other. I often don’t know. I often don’t know.”

  He paused on some futility or despair.

  “There’s a notion that once you’ve taken your ordination vows that there’s no more trouble. People have the same charming illusion about marriage too. They’ll stay happily married by saying a few words one morning at an altar, but everything has to be struggled for. A priest has to do it utterly alone, alone with his life and his God, there are not any dramas of quarrel and reunion about that. It’s not easy, day after day.”

  His words, so different to anything he’d ever shown you in his life before, changed the day by magic, though you didn’t fully understand what he said. It became one call to struggle and sacrifice.

  “I thought I might be a priest after a few years, when I’d be more certain,” they moved you to say.

  “It’s unlikely,” he brought that to a halt. “I’m not so sure of late vocations. Life is very short. There’s something not nice about making a gift of worn clothes. You can do good in any way of life, a person is always more important than any way. If a man chooses a way of life he should try and stick to it. Changing doesn’t matter. You’ll have yourself on your hands at the end of all change

  “Would you care to walk outside? That’s if you’re not tired after the town. It’s very fine, the evening,” the priest’s voice was restless and excited.

  “No. I’m not tired. I’d like to, father.”

  The evening gave no shock of cold, it was so close and warm, midges were beginning to swarm.

  Shoes crunched on the gravel as you walked between the laurels, from the car at the cactus to the bell-rope dangling before the church door, the first fading traces of the light, the moon a pale vapour above. On the gravel the shoes went back and forward.

  “Don’t throw things in the ditch no matter what happens. You’ll be tempted. Your faith will weaken. Doubt will grow like cancel. You’ll be rebuked by other people doing better in the world than you, but do not mind. Remember your life is a great mystery in Christ and that nothing but your state of mind can change. And pray. It’s not merely repetition of words. It’s a simple silent act of turning the mind on God, the contemplation of the mystery, the Son of God going by way of Palm Sunday to Calvary and on to Easter.”

  “Yes, father,” you answered, somewhere you’d felt or known that before though you couldn’t say how or when.

  “Though remember I’d do Peter on this in public before I’d admit it. They’d think they’d a madman for curate, and that’d do no one good. I’d deny it in public. It’d only cause trouble for me and everyone.”

  You’d never heard talk of this kind before. Everything seemed to grow more complicated.

  “Thank you, father,” you said, mechanical.

  “For what?” he reacted sharply.

  “For telling me,” you fumbled, out of depth.

  “No, don’t thank me. Someone told me much the same once, it doesn’t matter much who. The man’s dead. But it was one thing I never lost, it meant something. I’ve told you now. The debt is paid back in some way. It is a great mystery.

  “Don’t think I’m a saint because I’m a priest and know things hundreds knew. I’d probably deny it before a crowd, to myself even on another night. I have some reason to believe that even the most stupid and mean are visited many times by consciousness of the mystery. You see it especially after the feasts of food and wine, around Christmas, in the dregs of a wedding day. That it’s safely killed doesn’t matter. We all want to enjoy ourselves in eternal day. Security, that’s what everyone’s after, security.”

  What he said didn’t matter. He’d moved deeps within you that you could not follow. He was so changed: was this the same man that had showed you scars on his belly, the arm and voice of the night before, he who’d been resentful of you over the meal because you’d left the house to see Joan. Yet it must be. It must be that something had broken, a total generosity flowing.

  “You can do me one favour.”

  “What, father?”

  “Remember me in your prayers, as I’ll remember you.”

  “I will, father.”

  “The midges, not even my cigarette smoke keeps them away, a sign of rain they say,” he was anxious to change.

  “My father says that too.”

  “Strange how uneasy people get when they’ve really spoken,” his own pace had quickened. “All the things we say. And how little of all the words even touch any reality. Or perhaps they all do if we knew it,” he changed to laugh lightly.

  “None of what I said was meant to make you uneasy. Only because I was uneasy myself. I’m not usually like this, hardly ever, I don’t know what got into me,” his hand rested a split second on your shoulder in reassurance.

  The summer night was there, the sense of damp or dew. The moon was pale but out, the smoke of rain about it. The shadows stretched lightly on the gravel. Sense of dusk was about the grass and growths of the graves, about the pale shining laurels. The pores of the cactus must be open to the cool and dampness.

  “Perhaps we’d better go in. John may have something for us.”

  Biscuits and glasses of cold milk waited inside on the table. The clocks chimed. The priest said he had to do some private things: you were free to stay up or go to bed. Tiredness and the burden of nothing to do drove you to bed. You fell immediately asleep.

  It was late when you woke, past ten on the clocks downstairs.

  Father Gerald had already said Mass. John had served.

  “I looked in at eight but you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. You have the long journey before you today,” he said.

  That you were going home today was a shock. With Joan, before evening, you’d face your father. Now that it was lost, this house with the priest and John seemed a world where you could have stayed. You wished you could tell Father Gerald that you wanted to stay here for the rest of the holidays. You wished you could tell him that you were on your way to be a priest. You’d stay here in the long summers from Maynooth. But that was changed, it was lost, and there was a horror of attraction about it now that it was lost, your dream had strayed about it now, and you felt the pain as you poured milk over the cornflakes and tried to eat.

  The windows were bleared with a soft steady drizzle outside and after breakfast you sat with the priest and read newspapers and watched out on the laurels shining with wet and the fresh dark gravel and the wet roof of the church.

  He drove you into town when it was time, almost far as Ryan’s door but not quite.

  “You’re on your own now,” he said. “There’s going to be no pleasantness over Joan’s going like this and I can’t seem to get involved. I have to remain in the parish. I’m their priest.”

  “It’s alright, father. I didn’t expect you. You were very kind to drive me in. Thank you, father.”

  “Good-bye. God guard you.”

  You watched the car away, the tyres swishing in the wet. A sickness rose as you faced for Ryan’s, what was the use of all this effort, you wanted not to have to.

&n
bsp; “I wonder if you could tell her I’m here, please,” you said to Ryan. You stood just inside the shop door. He went inside.

  She was crying when she appeared with her case. You took it and went without saying anything out into the rain.

  “Why are you crying, Joan?”

  “They made me feel so awful going.”

  “Did they do anything to you?”

  “No. They never spoke a word to me after you left. They made remarks among themselves. They didn’t as much as shake hands there now.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. You’re going home. People like that aren’t worth cursing, never mind thinking about them. So just forget it. You’ll never have to see them again.”

  Rain dripped from the lintel above the doorway you stood in, waiting for the bus to come.

  Once you’d got the tickets in the bus she said, “What do you think he’ll say?”

  “He’ll say nothing. I’ll just tell him what happened. You couldn’t stay on and that’s all.”

  “What’ll I do then? Where’ll I go next?”

  She might have asked the same question for yourself—for the first time you really looked in her face.

  “I don’t know. Stay at home for a while.”

  “But he’ll make it awful.”

  “Go to England I suppose then.”

  “Will I have to go to England? It’ll be horrid to face into all that strangeness.” Her eyes were asking to relieve some of the oppression, the despair. She watched people leave and board the bus with the same impassiveness with which she watched the raindrops slip down the bleared windows.

  “We may be all in England soon.”

  “You, too?”

  “Me too,” you smiled cruelly.

  “But are you going to leave soon?”

  “No. I don’t think so but June isn’t far away—and the exams.”

  “But you’ll get a good job here?”

  “There aren’t many jobs.”

  “But you’ve a good chance?”

  “Oh, Joan, it doesn’t matter a curse. What the hell difference does it make? What the hell difference does anything make? We’ll always be in some bus or something or room or road and air in our ears while we’re in it no matter what happens.”