Amongst Women

by John McGahern

  Rose and the girls smiled as the tea and the plates circled around him. They were already conspirators. They were mastered and yet they were controlling together what they were mastered by.

  ‘Thanks,’ he put his cup away. ‘I’ll go out to the fields for a few hours to try to work off some of this.’

  He changed into his old clothes and left. They washed and dried the cups and plates and put them away. A quiet that was close to let-down replaced the wild bustle of the preparation but they were enjoying each other’s company, the animal comfort of other presences, banishment of loneliness.

  Outside, Moran thinned several small ash trees from the hedge that ran along the foot of the orchard. He liked mechanical things and he was pleased that the chainsaw he had had to dismantle several times in the past seemed to run perfectly. ‘It must have been the timing that was out all along.’ The felling, trimming, cutting, absorbed him completely and because of the ferocity of the running chain it demanded his undivided attention. Michael followed him out and helped pile the waste branches into heaps for burning and then they stacked the scattered lengths of the firewood.

  Inside, the girls showed Rose all over the house. After that she began to tell them a little about her life in Scotland, particularly her life with the Rosenblooms.

  ‘Sometimes at the weekend Mr Rosenbloom would come and ask me to iron his shirts. He had hundreds of shirts and why he ever wanted me to iron them I’ll never know. Mrs Rosenbloom nearly always found out about it and she would be mad that he had taken me from my work with the children. There’d be a battle royal all morning. After lunch he’d go into the city and come back with a whole armful of roses, the price of many shirts.’

  ‘Would she be satisfied with that?’ the girls demanded greedily.

  ‘She’d hold out for a while but it would always be made up after he came back with the roses. He’d swear of course that he’d never again steal me from my proper duties with the children. She’d cut and arrange the roses. They’d dress up then and go out to dinner to some restaurant, laughing and talking together as if nothing at all had happened.’

  ‘What would they be talking about, Rose?’

  ‘About what they’d eat that evening in the restaurant and what wines they’d drink. You would wonder how they could eat at all after the amount of time they spent talking about food.’

  When Moran came in from the field with Michael he was in high good humour.

  ‘This man and me are after slaughtering a few trees out there.’

  Even the way he hung his hat was expansive, drawing the whole room in. The girls knew how soon this mood could change if it was not fully entered into.

  ‘I’m fit to tackle a live child again,’ he joked as they prepared to eat.

  ‘Now Michael, that’s hardly necessary,’ Rose scolded gently.

  ‘It might not be but it’s the godalmighty truth,’ he asserted so playfully back that the whole table laughed.

  After the tea he suggested that they play cards, already shuffling the cards he took from the sill. They played Twenty-one; the scores were kept on the inside of a Lyons Green Label tea packet. Moran was the best player and mostly won but that night he attributed his winnings to the cards he had been dealt. They knelt to the Rosary. Moran began, ‘Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips,’ as he began every evening. There was a pause when he ended the First Mystery. All their eyes were turned on Rose but she, with just a glance at Moran, took up the Second Mystery as if she had been saying it with them all the nights of their lives.

  After the prayers they went up in turn and kissed Moran and then Rose who returned their kisses warmly, and they slipped away to their rooms. The boy was going to the boxroom and was clearly excited at possessing a room of his own for the first time. He too kissed Rose. Rose and Moran sat on alone in the room. They were not silent but only spoke after long intervals and what they said did not carry to the upstairs rooms. When the couple did go to their bedroom the girls became even more wide awake than before. They tried not to breathe as they listened. They were too nervous and frightened of life to react to or put into words the sounds they heard from the room where their father was sleeping with Rose.

  Rose was up at seven the next morning, an hour before the house usually stirred. When the girls came down they found the room already warm, the fire lit, the kettle steaming. Rose was preparing to bring Moran a mug of tea.

  ‘Daddy wouldn’t hear of having his breakfast in bed,’ she said with a small engaging laugh. ‘But he might as well have this before getting up.’

  She made an enormous difference in the house. Since their mother’s death it had been run by Maggie, with bits of help from Mona and Sheila. At first their mother’s sister had come from time to time but she and Moran had quarrelled. He was not interested in food other than it should not cost too much and wasn’t raw. The girls had never been taught to cook or housekeep. They could cook vegetables and meat simply, deal with eggs and bacon and porridge, and they were able to bake and housekeep, learning as they went along. They didn’t need to know much more.

  Rose changed everything. She was able to organize her day so that even though she seemed to be less harassed than Maggie the meals were always delicious and on time. Then she began to clean and paint the house room by room. Moran complained about the unnecessary disturbance though it was the cost that he was secretly worried by. She pointed out that the plaster would soon fall away without paint. Whenever he complained too much about cost she went and bought what she needed with her own money. That he disliked even more. In the end he always gave what she asked but he resented the giving. She did not seem to mind and she was inordinately careful. ‘You know Daddy.’ she would laugh defensively with the girls. All the children helped her redecorate the house. When it was done the whole house had acquired a new pleasantness and comfort. Even Moran had to admit it though he dismissed it as well by saying that it would have done well enough for the likes of him as it had been.

  What was also clear was that the house’s need of Maggie had disappeared. Rose brought this up very gently to Moran.

  ‘She’ll have a roof over her head as long as I’m above ground,’ he responded aggressively.

  ‘She’ll have that as long as I’m here too but I think she should have more.’

  ‘What more does she want?’

  ‘She’s almost nineteen. The day is gone when a girl waits around till some man needs a wife. She should have the protection of some work.’

  ‘What job of any good would she get here? She left school at fourteen. She wasn’t all that good at school either.’

  ‘There’s a shortage of nurses in England. I always regretted I never trained. I’ve spoken to her and she’s interested.’

  ‘You were very quick off the mark, weren’t you? A lot of our people go wrong in England.’

  ‘I was there for a while,’ she said pointedly but she was careful not to press too much. She had heard already from the girls how Luke had tried to get Maggie to go to England to learn nursing against Moran’s fierce opposition, how their older brother and Moran had fought, and when Maggie yielded to Moran and stayed, Luke had gone on his own without telling his father.

  She waited until Moran himself had to come to talk about Maggie. Sheila and Mona were at the convent secondary school, Michael was finishing national school. Maggie had so little to do during the day that she spent much of the time chatting and gossiping with Rose. She would pretend to be busy whenever she heard Moran come. ‘Daddy hates to see anybody sitting down doing nothing.’ ‘Poor Daddy,’ Rose would smile with affection after he had gone again.

  Moran began to see how little Maggie had to do in the house and that she needed money for dances and clothes now. He suspected Rose was letting her have some of her own money.

  ‘Do you still think that Maggie should go to England to nurse?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I do. She’d always have something to fall back on. You never know what is going to happen in a
life. It’s a profession.’

  ‘I don’t know. I was very much against it when that brother of hers wanted her to go. Of course he wasn’t interested in what was good or bad for the girls. He was doing it against me.’

  ‘I’m far from against you, you know that. I want it for her own good. This place will always be here for her to come home to as long as I breathe.’

  Because of the shortages of girls for nursing, many ads were appearing in the daily papers. Rose helped Maggie to write away for the forms and then to fill in the forms when they came. To Moran’s surprise she was accepted for training by five hospitals. The whole house sat down after the Rosary one evening to pick the hospital she would go to. They chose the London Hospital because a few people from around were already working there. After they had reached that decision Michael began to cry and would not be consoled.

  ‘They’ll all be gone soon,’ he said to their humorous questioning. ‘It’s awful. It’s not fair.’

  When Rose suggested that they write to Luke to ask him to meet Maggie off the train when she got to London Moran was furious.

  ‘Didn’t the hospital say they’d have her met?’

  ‘He’s her brother. It’d be natural for him to meet Maggie.’

  ‘There’s not a natural bone in that gentleman’s body. I wrote him several times and all the answer I ever got was I’m-well- here-and-I-hope-you-are-well-there. Is that natural after all the years of bringing him up?’

  ‘These things happen in families and then they pass,’ Rose said quietly. ‘An accident happens or a wedding. People are forced back together again. I know how you feel, Daddy, but maybe it is better not to take too strong a stand. Things are always changing. You never know how they’ll turn out. If you do the generous thing, then you can’t be blamed.’

  ‘I can be blamed. Make no mistake about that. In this case I can always be blamed.’

  ‘I know it is hard but it’s better to try to ignore what is said against you. If you can ignore it then you’ll know that you have nothing to blame yourself for. Do nothing in a hurry.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I think it’d be better if you wrote him,’ Rose suggested.

  ‘I’ll probably just earn another kick in the teeth but I’ll do it none the less.’

  Moran spent a long time composing the letter. He could not resist adding recrimination. Luke answered the letter by telegram. Seldom a telegram came and nobody liked to see one come to a house. The small green envelope with the harp generally came with news of sudden death. Moran’s high- strung nervousness, which was usually concealed by slow, deliberate movements, was all on show as he looked about him like an animal in unknown territory and tore open the envelope. When he read delighted to meet maggie stop love stop luke he had to struggle to contain himself. He was barely able to conceal his fury until after he paid the postman whom he walked all the way out to the iron gate.

  ‘Maybe he just sent the telegram and a letter will come after a few days,’ Maggie tried to soothe.

  ‘No letter will come. It leaves me like a right fool out in the bloody open.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can say that, Daddy. You did everything decent,’ Rose said.

  ‘Why in the name of the Saviour do you have to put your ignorance on full display,’ he turned on her. ‘You don’t know the first thing about the business, woman.’

  That the telegram was formally polite and completely ignored his own attack infuriated Moran. After he had read it aloud he crumpled the note up in his fist and thrust it into the fire as if the very sight of it was hateful.

  ‘Well, at least you’ll have someone to meet you at Euston,’ Rose said softly to Maggie who already knew that she would be met.

  ‘Of course he’ll meet her. He’ll meet her to try to turn her against me,’ shouted Moran.

  ‘He was polite enough,’ Rose suggested.

  ‘What do you know about it? What in hell do you know about anything?’

  He swept his hat from the dresser and crushed it on his head and went outside as if he might break down the doors in his way. Soon they heard the sharp, swift sounds of the axe as he started to split lengths of branches into firewood.

  She stood stunned. He had never spoken to her like that before. In the spreading lull she looked towards the others. They had all been there when Moran read out the telegram. Part of her expected to find them laughing at his wild reaction beyond all sense and to return her to the blessed normal but when she looked around only Maggie stood in the room. The others had slipped away like ghosts. Maggie was kneading currants through dough in a glass bowl on the sideboard, as absorbed in the kneading as if all of her life were passing through the pale dough.

  ‘Where have they all disappeared to all of a sudden, Maggie?’

  ‘They must have gone out,’ Maggie looked up from the dough with intense attention.

  ‘I thought I might find them laughing at poor Daddy,’ Rose said, allowing her own shock and fear to ease out in the nervous laughter, but Maggie’s face remained pale and serious.

  ‘I don’t know what happened to Daddy,’ Rose said.

  ‘Sometimes he gets like that.’

  ‘I never saw him so upset.’

  ‘He’s not been like that for a long time.’

  ‘Was he often like that?’

  ‘Before, but not for a long time now,’ Maggie admitted reluctantly and Rose did not want to learn any more. She had already more than she wanted to deal with. In the silence the sound of the sledge could be heard thudding on stones from one of the near fields. He had already abandoned the timber.

  Often when talking with the girls she had noticed that whenever Moran entered the room silence and deadness would fall on them; and if he was eating alone or working in the room – setting the teeth of a saw, putting a handle in a broken spade on a wet day, taking apart the lighting plant that never seemed to run properly for long – they always tried to slip away. If they had to stay they moved about the place like shadows. Only when they dropped or rattled something, the startled way they would look towards Moran, did the nervous tension of what it took to glide about so silently show. Rose had noticed this and she had put it down to the awe and respect in which the man she so loved was held, and she was loath to see differently now. She had chosen Moran, had married him against convention and her family. All her vanity was in question. The violence Moran had turned on her she chose to ignore, to let her own resentment drop and to join the girls as they stole about so that their presences would never challenge his.

  He came in very late, wary, watchful. The cheerfulness with which Rose greeted him he met with a deep reserve. She was unprepared for it and her nervousness increased tenfold as she bustled about to get his tea. Sheila and Mona were writing at side tables; Michael was kneeling at the big armchair, a book between his elbows, as if in prayer, a position he sometimes used for studying. All three looked up gravely to acknowledge their father’s presence; but, sensing his mood at once, they buried themselves again in their schoolwork.

  ‘Where’s Maggie?’ he demanded.

  ‘She went to visit some friends in the village.’

  ‘She seems always to be on the tramp these days.’

  ‘She’s going around mostly saying goodbye to people.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be missed,’ he said acidly.

  Rose poured him his tea. The table was covered with a spotless cloth. As he ate and drank she found herself chattering away to him out of nervousness, a stream of things that went through her head, the small happenings of a day. She talked out of confusions: fear, insecurity, love. Her instinct told her she should not be talking but she could not stop. He made several brusque, impatient movements at the table but still she could not stop. Then he turned round the chair in a fit of hatred. The children were listening though they kept their eyes intently fixed on their school books.

  ‘Did you ever listen carefully to yourself, Rose?’ he said. ‘If you listened
a bit more carefully to yourself I think you might talk a lot less.’

  She looked like someone who had been struck without warning but she did not try to run or cry out. She stood still for a long moment that seemed to the others to grow into an age. Then, abjectly, as if engaged in reflection that gave back only its own dullness, she completed the tasks she had been doing and, without saying a word to the expectant children, left the room.

  ‘Where are you going, Rose?’ he asked in a tone that told her that he knew he had gone too far but she continued on her way.

  It galled him to have to sit impotently in silence; worse still, that it had been witnessed. They kept their heads down in their books though they had long ceased to study, unwilling to catch his eye or even to breathe loudly. All they had ever been able to do in the face of violence was to bend to it.

  Moran sat for a long time. When he could stand the silence no longer he went briskly into the other room. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ they heard him say. They were able to hear clearly though he had closed the door. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ he had to say again. ‘I lost my temper.’ After a pause they thought would never end they heard, ‘I want to be alone,’ clear as a single bell note, free of all self-assertiveness. He stayed on in the room but there was nothing he could do but withdraw.

  When he came back he sat beside the litter of his meal on the table among the three children not quite knowing what to do with himself. Then he took a pencil and paper and started to tot up all the monies he presently held against the expenses he had. He spent a long time over these calculations and they appeared to soothe him.

  ‘We might as well say the Rosary now,’ he announced when he put pencil and paper away, taking out his beads and letting them dangle loudly. They put away their exercises and took out their beads.