Creatures of the Earth

by John McGahern

  ‘That must be even harder still to get into,’ the boy answered lightly again, certain that it could never be of any real concern.

  ‘I was trained at Sandhurst. There are some who think it the best military academy in the world. If you were offered a place there, would it interest you?’

  ‘Of course I would be interested.’ His own assent seemed far off, so unreal it hardly touched him.

  ‘Would you be interested in a military career?’

  ‘No, not more than any other.’ The boy smiled. ‘But it’d be more interesting than anything I’d have a chance of here.’

  ‘You know that you could be killed or badly wounded early in life.’

  ‘I know that, but it would be better than working in an office.’

  ‘There’s much office work in the military too – but I take it you are interested.’

  ‘Yes, Colonel, but you’d have to ask my father. It all depends on what he’d think,’ and it occurred to the boy that the father mightn’t take to the idea at all. The unreality was sure to end there. The years his father was most proud of were the years of the War of Independence when he was the commander of a small company of men on the run.

  The leaves they were burning were catching light, and he went to get the baskets of leaves Mrs Sinclair had left waiting. It was one of the tasks he liked best. When he piled on the leaves he stood back to watch the thick white smoke lift slowly above the beech trees and, as there was no wind, hang like clouds in the dead air.

  That evening the Colonel talked with Mrs Sinclair about the idea of getting a commission for Johnny. It was decided that the Colonel should go to the headmaster of the school secretly to find out exactly how fitted the boy might be.

  The school and monastery had been once a British military barracks, though now it had a rounded ecclesiastical door in the high wall, and what had been the drilling square was now a lawn with a few evergreens, one lilac tree, white lawn blocks, and a concrete path that ran straight from the gate to the monastery door.

  As soon as Brother Benedict appeared, they shook hands, introducing themselves; and, when the Colonel explained what had brought him, the Brother showed him into a large dining-room full of mahogany and leather, an array of polished silver on the heavy sideboard.

  ‘He does some work for us on Saturdays. Mrs Sinclair and I are quite impressed with him and would like to help him, if that’s possible. We just wondered how able is he. He is the type that doesn’t give much away.’

  ‘He’s the best student we’ve had for some years.’ Brother Benedict smiled. He was from the south, with a clever, handsome face. He wore rimless steel spectacles which he had the habit of polishing from time to time with a pocket handkerchief kept up his sleeve for that purpose alone, holding the spectacles at full length after polishing, while weighing up a situation or person. When not wearing spectacles he seemed to be always smiling, but there was calculation behind the smile. He had heard about the Colonel’s visits to Charlie’s and was curious to meet him. He was very fond of good whiskey himself and thought it a proper occasion to produce his own. From a large bunch hanging from his belt he selected a small key, unlocked the sideboard, took out a bottle of Redbreast, and poured two large measures. ‘So, naturally, we are interested in him too. The old Sergeant is our problem. He’s forever trying to push Johnny into what he calls “gainful” employment. But for all his quiet, he shouldn’t be underestimated. He’s a survivor and far from being without guile. Like the rest of the country he has a great store of negative capability. He’d much prefer not to.’

  ‘He certainly seemed positive enough about the army.’

  After a second Redbreast, the Colonel left well satisfied and drove directly to the parsonage.

  ‘The boy is as bright as we suspected,’ he told Mrs Sinclair. ‘His headmaster turned out to be quite a remarkable man.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh, clever, civilized, decent, very clever, in fact. Sort of man you’d expect to find high up in the army. He keeps an excellent whiskey. We mustn’t forget to leave him a bottle of Black Bush for Christmas. They don’t seem to live badly at all in there.’

  That evening the Sinclairs left for Charlie’s a half-hour early. They did not have to go all the way to the barrack gate. The Sergeant was digging potatoes inside the line of sycamores. When he saw the Jaguar stop in the avenue, at once he came up to the wall, bringing the spade to lean on, a glow of pleasure on his face at the unexpected break in the evening’s work.

  ‘Just digging out the few potatoes,’ he said to the Colonel, who got out of the car. ‘A real sign that the old year is almost done.’

  ‘Very good ones they seem to be too,’ the Colonel responded, and at once began his proposition.

  At first, the Sergeant listened smiling. Obscurely, he had always felt that some benefit would flow from the association with the Sinclairs. Soon it grew clear that what was being proposed was no benefit at all. He was not a man to look for any abstraction in the sparrow’s fall. If that small disturbance of the air was to earn a moment’s attention, he would want to know at once what effect it would have on him or that larger version of himself that he was fond of referring to as ‘my family’. By the time the Colonel had finished he was speechless with rage.

  ‘It’d mean he’d come out of all that as a British army officer?’

  ‘Precisely. That is, of course, if he is accepted, and proves satisfactory.’

  ‘He couldn’t.’ He was so choked with emotion that he was barely able to get out the words.

  ‘He seemed to have no objection to the idea.’

  ‘He can’t. That’s the end and the be-all.’

  ‘Very well, then. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Goodbye, Sergeant.’

  The Sergeant didn’t know what to do with his rage as he watched the black car back out the avenue, turn and snake round by the bridge to Charlie’s. He did not move till the post office shut the car from sight, and then, mouthing curses, started to beat the sides of ridges with the spade, only stopping when he felt the handle crack, realizing that he could be seen by someone passing the road. There was no one passing, but even if there were he could always pretend that it was a rat he had been pursuing among the furrows.

  The Sergeant waited until the barrack orderly came back on duty and the dayroom door shut again before he went in search of the boy.

  ‘I hear we’re about to have a young Sassenach on our hands, an officer and gentleman to boot, not just the usual fool of an Irishman who rushes to the railway station at the first news of a war,’ he opened.

  ‘It was Colonel Sinclair who brought it up. I told him he’d have to ask you.’

  ‘And I’m told you’re favourably inclined to the idea.’

  ‘I said you’d have to be asked first.’

  ‘Well, then. I have news for you. You’re going to no Sandhurst whether they’d have you or not, and I even doubt if the Empire is that hard up. And you’re not going to the Sinclairs’ this Saturday or any other Saturday, for that matter. I was a fool to countenance the idea in the first place. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?’

  ‘I say that I’m not going,’ the boy said, barely able to speak with disappointment and anger.

  ‘And you can say it again if you want,’ and the father left him, well satisfied with the damaging restraint of his performance, his self-esteem completely restored.

  The following Saturday the Sinclairs lingered a long time over breakfast but at ten-thirty the Colonel rose. ‘He’s not coming. He was always punctual. He’s been stopped.’

  ‘There’s a chance he may be ill,’ Mrs Sinclair said.

  ‘That would be too much of a coincidence.’

  They prepared as usual for the garden, but neither had heart for their separate tasks. They found themselves straying into one another’s company, until Mrs Sinclair smiled sadly and said what they had been avoiding. ‘It’s a hurt.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

 
‘That’s the trouble. We can’t help but get attached,’ she added quietly. It was the end of no world, they had been through too much for that, but these small hurts seemed to gather with the hurts that had gone before to form a weight that was dispiriting; and, with the perfect tact that is a kind of mind-reading, she said, ‘Why don’t we forget the garden? I know we have a rule against drinking during the day, but I think we can make an exception today. I promise to try to make an especially nice lunch.’

  ‘What kind of wine?’ he asked.

  ‘Red wine,’ she said at once.

  ‘I suppose the lesson is that we should have let well enough alone,’ he said.

  ‘I had my doubts all along but, I suppose, I was hoping they weren’t true. I don’t really think we’d have managed to get him into Sandhurst in the first place; but if we had, his trouble would have just begun – his whole background, his accent most of all. It’s hopeless to even contemplate. Let’s make lunch.’

  The boy hung about the gravel outside the barracks that morning. Casey was the barrack orderly again. All the others were out on patrol. After he had finished the Independent, Casey came out to join the boy on the gravel.

  ‘This must be the first Saturday in a long time you aren’t away helping the Colonel,’ Guard Casey probed gently.

  ‘I was stopped,’ he replied with open bitterness.

  ‘I suppose it’ll be the end of the free fruit and vegetables. I hear they were threatening to make a British officer out of you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded. Many go from here to England to work.’

  ‘Your father would never have been able to live with that. You really have to be born into that class of people. You don’t ever find robins feeding with the sparrows.’

  ‘Will the Sergeant be out on evening patrol?’

  ‘I’ll have a look.’

  Johnny followed Casey over the hollow, scrubbed boards of the dayroom, where the policeman looked in the big ledger.

  ‘He is. From six to nine. In the Crossna direction.’

  It was in the opposite direction to the Colonel’s. During those hours he would go to the parsonage to explain why he had not come to them, how it had ended.

  Just after six, as soon as the Sergeant was out of sight, the boy crossed the bridge with a hazel fishing rod. Though it was too late for the small fish, perch or roach, he could say he was throwing a line out as a sort of experiment, for fun; but as soon as he was across the bridge he hid it behind a wall and took to the fields. Running, walking, running, scrambling across the stone walls, keeping well away from the farmhouses, he was soon close to the parsonage, which he circled, coming up through the orchard at the back. He was so mindless with the fear of not getting to the house in secret that he could hardly remember why he had set out, when he found himself at the kitchen window looking in at the Colonel and Mrs Sinclair seated at the big table with wine glasses in their hands. They were so absorbed in their conversation that he had to tap the window before they noticed. They both rose to let him in.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, I would have come today as usual if he’d let me.’ Hard as he tried, he wasn’t able to beat down a sudden attack of sobbing. They allowed him to quiet and Mrs Sinclair got him a large glass of raspberry cordial.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t your fault. That’s the very last thing anybody could imagine.’ Mrs Sinclair put the glass in his hand, gently touching his hair.

  ‘In fact, it was all our fault. Our proposal upset everything,’ Colonel Sinclair said. ‘We didn’t think it through.’ He didn’t know what to give the boy, knew he wouldn’t accept money and, in a fit of weary inspiration, he went upstairs to fetch a book on natural history that had been their son’s favourite book when young. He first checked with his wife, and when she nodded he gave it to the boy. ‘It’s something we want you to have. We intended to give it to you for Christmas.’

  In spite of the gift, he knew that it was all closing down. With kindness but with firmness, the Sinclairs were now more separate than the evening the Colonel had come to the barracks with the basket of apples. A world had opened that evening; it was closing now like curtains being silently drawn, and all the more finally because there was not even a shadow of violence.

  It had not been easy to face the Sinclairs. He had made clear his own position, and he felt freed. When he got to the bridge, he took the hazel rod from beneath the wall and held it in full view, hiding the book under his coat. He met no one. There were no bicycles against the barrack wall. The policemen hadn’t come in off patrol. He was about to drop in on Casey when he noticed that there was already someone there, a tall young man who was standing in his bare feet against the wall beneath the measuring bar, which Casey was adjusting.

  ‘You’re the height, all right. A good five-eleven and a half. Now lift your arms till we find out if you have the chest measurements as well.’

  ‘I’ve them, all right, Guard Casey,’ the young man laughed nervously. ‘But what I’m most afraid of is the Irish.’

  ‘You needn’t be a bit afeard. I’m one of the few guards fluent in two languages, the best Rosses Blas from the cradle, and I haven’t a quarter use for even one language, so don’t you worry about the Irish.’

  The weak sun was going down beyond Oakport Wood. Only the muscling river moved. In another hour the Sinclairs’ car would be crossing the bridge to Charlie’s. An hour after that the Sergeant would come in off patrol. That seemed the whole endless world then.

  The burning of Rockingham House stood out from all else in the still-emptying countryside in the next few years. In that amazing night all was lit up, the whole lake and its islands all the way across to the Rockadoon and first slopes of the Curlews, the great beech walk going towards Boyle, the woods behind the house, and over them the High Plains, the light leaping even to Great Meadow. The glass of the three hundred and sixty-five windows shattered. The roof came down. Among the priceless things said to have been lost was a rocking chair that could be drawn as a sleigh, beautifully carved leopards asleep on the armrests, one of three made by the great German craftsmen of St Petersburg for Catherine the Great. All that remained of the front of the house overlooking the lake and islands was the magnificent shell and portals, now full of sky and dangerous in high winds. Only rooms in the servants’ quarters in the part of the basement next to the sunken tennis courts had escaped the fire. Sir Cecil and Lady King-Harmon, who had been much photographed during the week at the Newmarket Yearling Sales, came home at once and took over a floor of the Royal Hotel.

  Talk ran riot. All small suspicious burnings usual to the area were forgotten about: ramshackle farmhouses soaked in paraffin, a candle lit in a tin container above saturated rags and wood, doors and windows secured, the owners off to town for the day. During the six hours it would take the candle to burn down, they’d make sure to be seen in every shop and pub in town, and come home in darkness to find the house blazing in a bright promise of insurance money.

  No house had been insured more handsomely than the great house built by Nash above Lough Key. Suspicion and old caste hostility scenting power in the turning of the wheel was enough to rouse the Sergeant to covert but vigorous investigation. There had been carelessness. A house steward under suspicion in a number of cases of arson in Canada had been hired just six weeks before. A wild drunken party had been held in the servants’ quarters the night before the fire, champagne and rare brandies drunk. There had been loose talk. The Sergeant filed all this as preliminary evidence and asked permission to begin formal inquiries. He was warned off at once. Sir Cecil was one of the Councillors of State. When the Sergeant obstinately persisted, he was given notice of transfer to Donegal. This he countered by resigning. He had reached the age when he was entitled to retire on reduced pension. A twelve-acre farm that had once been the nursery farm for the gardens of Rockingham, with a stone house, the traditional residence of the head gardener of Rockingham, came on the market. He bought it and left the barracks. It stood just outs
ide the Demesne Wall, a small iron gate in the wall, and a bridle path led from it to Rockingham House. It was said to have been used by the different ladies of Rockingham when they came to choose plants for the house gardens. The surprisingly exotic plants from as far away as China and India that grew wild here and there on the farm meant nothing to the Sergeant. He bought cows and a tractor, began to send milk to the creamery, put down a potato patch, fought a losing battle each harvest with the pigeons from the estate woods over his rood of oats. It was an exact replica of the life he’d lived as a boy.

  A small ceremony in the rose garden of the parsonage at Ardcarne that year would have passed unnoticed even if there had been no great fire. Mrs Sinclair had died in a London clinic after a long illness. She had asked for her ashes to be scattered in the rose garden of ‘the dear house’. The Colonel, his daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren brought the ashes from London. On a wet, windy afternoon the daughter released the ashes from the urn. She did it nervously and some of the dust blew back in her face, sticking to her hair and clothes. They all stayed in the Royal that night, and the next day the young family left for Durham.

  The Colonel opened the house as soon as they’d gone. But he did not go to Charlie’s that evening. Instead, he went to the Royal, and this he continued to do as regularly as once Mrs Sinclair and he had set out for Charlie’s. The Rockingham woods were sold. Sawmills were set up, and to everybody’s surprise the Colonel became manager of McAinish’s Mill. To begin with, he was unpopular with the workmen, insisting on strict timekeeping, which was in opposition to the casual local sense of coming and going, fining each man an hour’s pay for every fifteen minutes late; but he was fair, and it was said that he came to know as much about the saws and machinery as any mechanic in the woods, and it became the best and happiest of the mills. Though he always remained aloof, there grew an unspoken loyalty between him and his men.

  Colonel Sinclair bought a small turkey in Boyle that Christmas Eve. It was all he needed for the holiday. There was fruit in the house, wine, a few heads of lettuce still in the greenhouse. Then he went for a stroll in the streets. Mrs Sinclair had been very fond of this town. It was a bright, clear night, brighter still with the strings of Christmas lights climbing towards the star above the clock on the Crescent. Gerald Dodd, Town Commissioner had gone to join the Rockinghams on the clock’s memorial stone. The Colonel approved but it also made him smile. Surrounded on the stone by the formidable roll call of Staffords and King-Harmons the name Gerald Dodd had the effect of a charming and innocent affrontery. The King-Harmons would certainly not have approved. The Staffords would have been outraged. On the other side of the river the broken roof of the old British military barracks was white with frost. From one chimneypiece an elder grew. Amid it all the shallow river raced beneath the gentle curve of the bridge, rushed past the white walls of the Royal on its way out towards Key. About him people clapped one another on backs and shoulders. The air was thickly warm with Happy Christmases. The Colonel walked very slowly, enjoying the crowd but feeling outside the excitement. He shook hands affably with a few neighbours, touched his cap to the women, wishing them a Merry Christmas. He shook hands with men who worked for him in the mill, but he neither offered drinks nor was he asked.