Creatures of the Earth

by John McGahern

  ‘Yes, you’ll be a big shot down there at last,’ he said. ‘They’ll be made up. They’ll be getting a Christmas present. They’ll be getting one great big lump of a Christmas present.’

  ‘Look,’ John said soothingly. ‘Mother will be waiting. She’ll want to hear everything. And I have another home I have to go to yet.’

  ‘I followed it all on the clock,’ the mother said. ‘I knew the Mass for Peter was starting at eleven and I put the big alarm clock on the table. At twenty past twelve I could see the coffin going through the cattle gate at the foot of Killeelan.’

  ‘They were like a crowd of apes carrying the coffin up the hill. I could see it all from the car. Several times they had to put up hands as if the coffin was going to fall off the shoulders and roll back down the hill.’

  ‘Once it did fall off. Old Johnny Whelan’s coffin rolled halfway down the hill and broke open. They had to tie the boards together with the ropes they use for lowering into the grave. Some said the Whelans were drunk, others said they were too weak with hunger to carry the coffin. The Whelans were never liked. They are all in America now.’

  ‘Anyhow, we buried poor Peter,’ Philly said, as if it was at last a fact.

  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

  THE DARK

  NIGHTLINES

  THE LEAVETAKING

  GETTING THROUGH

  THE PORNOGRAPHER

  HIGH GROUND

  AMONGST WOMEN

  THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN

  MEMOIR

  play

  THE POWER OF DARKNESS

  Copyright

  First published in 1992

  by Faber and Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House

  74-77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  Revised hardback edition published by Faber and Faber Ltd in 2006

  This ebook edition first published in 2009

  All rights reserved

  © John McGahern, 1992, 2006

  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

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978—0—571—25023—3 [epub edition]