The Dark
Page 16
“It’s the best decision I think.”
“You’ll go to Dublin tomorrow?”
“At nine. They said at the station that the early train goes at nine. The early train would give more chance to look around.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“I’m certain. The whole thing’s caused you enough trouble already. And there’s no need. I’ll be able to manage.”
“It’d be no trouble to go if I could be of any use.”
“No. There’s no need. I’ll get a place.”
“If you’re stuck ask a policeman. You can take the number on his tunic if you feel there’s anything fishy about him.”
“I can do that if I’m stuck. Any place that looks alright will do till I get my feet. I can look around then.”
“Take a good look at the place first. Dublin’s not like down here.”
“I’ll do that. Will you go back tomorrow?”
“I will. On the bus. All you do in a place like this is waste money.”
There was the muffled sounds of movement in another bedroom, the stirring silence of a house at night. Feet continually passed on the concrete underneath the window.
“You’re going out into the world on your own now?”
“I am.”
“We won’t be together any more. There was good times and bad between us, as near everywhere, but it’s not what counts much.”
“No. It’s not what counts.”
“We were often cooped up too much in that house but we came through in spite of everything. That’s what is important. And you thrashed them all, and got the Scholarship. That was one good day we had, the day we went to the Royal Hotel.”
“It was a good day. I enjoyed that day very much. It cost you a lot of money.”
“A splash like that now and again is no harm. Going on all the time in the same way would land you soon in the madhouse.”
“That’s right. I never thought of it that way.”
“Things happened in all that time, none of us are saints. Tempers were lost. You don’t hold any of that against me, I don’t hold anything against you.”
“No. I wouldn’t have been brought up any other way or by any other father.”
“It might have been better if your mother had to live. A father doesn’t know much in a house. But you know that no matter what happened your father loves you. And that no matter what happens in the future he’ll love you still.”
“And I’ll always love you too. You know that.”
“I do.”
It seemed that the whole world must turn over in the night and howl in its boredom, for the father and for the son and for the whole shoot, but it did not.
Beyond the constant passing of feet on the concrete underneath the window a train shunted.
“We better try and go to sleep.”
“We’d be better. We have to be early afoot in the morning.”
“Good night so, Daddy.”
“Good night, my son. God bless you.”
Author biography
John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and brought up in the Republic of Ireland. He trained to be a primary-school teacher before becoming a full-time writer, and later taught and travelled extensively. He lived in County Leitrim. The author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, he was the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, the American-Irish Award, the Prix Etrangère Ecureuil and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women, which won both the GPA and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a four-part BBC television series. His work appeared in numerous anthologies and has been translated into many languages. In 2005, his autobiography, Memoir, won the South Bank Literature Award. John McGahern died in 2006.
by the same author
THE BARRACKS
NIGHTLINES
THE LEAVETAKING
GETTING THROUGH
THE PORNOGRAPHER
HIGH GROUND
AMONGST WOMEN
THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN
MEMOIR
CREATURES OF THE EARTH: NEW AND SELECTED STORIES
play
THE POWER OF DARKNESS
Copyright
First published in 1965
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
New Faber paperback edition published in 2008
This ebook edition first published in 2009
All rights reserved
© John McGahern, 1965
The right of John McGahern to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978—0—571—25021—9 [epub edition]