The Barracks

by John McGahern

  “That’s what’ll keep the blight away,” he called.

  “It’s more than time too,” Reegan shouted. “Some of the leaves are burned.”

  Brennan came into the garden to examine the blight on the leaves.

  “It’s time I sprayed my own so,” he said. “I suppose I can bring the can with me tonight. Mullins’ll be wantin’ to spray too if he hears about the blight.”

  “Bring it tonight, surely,” Reegan laughed.

  He felt the pressure on the pump as he drove it down to his hip. He turned on the tap. The two jets hissed out on the leaves. The strong, matted stalks broke apart as he backed up the furrow, the leaves showing a dull silver where they were upturned. Pools of blue gathered in the hollows of the leaves, they glistened green with wet, and then started to drip heavily in the silence, the way trees drip after rain. He had sown these potatoes, covered them with mould again when the first leaves ventured into the spring frosts, kept the weeds from choking them till they grew tall and blossomed, now he was spraying them against the blight this calm evening and he was happy.

  “What kind of a crop have you, Jim?” he asked out of mischief.

  “The best crop you’d see on a day’s walk,” Brennan boasted. “They’re as high as your hips and all blossom. That’s why I’m so anxious about the sprayin’.”

  “O God!” Reegan laughed inwardly; though it wasn’t fair, he thought—poor Brennan was far too gullible.

  The spray rocked in the can on his back as it emptied and then started to suck and the jets to weaken. He went with it to the barrel. Brennan had gone inside: he had thought to tell Reegan about the report he didn’t make and the books, but he was weak and afraid and Reegan could be too unpredictable.

  The screaming of the saws rose and fell across the lake. The stalks were dripping. A few people rode by on bicycles. One of them said, “God bless the work,” and Reegan answered, “And yours too, when you’re at it,” and then Quirke’s Ford came across the bridge as carefully as any vehicle could come and turned in the avenue to stop at the barrack gate.

  Reegan was rooted there with the spraying-can. He couldn’t move. Then he panicked to escape, lie down in the furrows or race for the shelter of the ash trees? No, he couldn’t do any of these, he might have been already seen, it’d be better to stand his ground and face it. What could Quirke do anyhow?

  He wasn’t able to continue spraying as if he hadn’t seen the car. He had to stand still, listen to the door slam and feet on the gravel, wait for, “Good day, Sergeant.”

  “Good day, sir,” he answered.

  “I see you’re doing some spraying,” Quirke leaned his arms on the top of the netting-wire, gloves in his hand.

  “That’s right, sir. It’s the weather for blight.”

  “You’ve good ones there too.”

  “They’re not bad,” Reegan managed a ghost of a smile.

  “I’m just passing. I suppose I better go and sign these books.”

  “Right, sir,” Reegan nodded and watched him go inside to Brennan and turned to spray in a fit of chagrin and desperation.

  Everything in the day had gone dead, actual spray fell from the nozzles on actual leaves, and he tried to vent his frustration by pumping madly and damaging the locked stalks as he backed savagely up the furrows.

  The pump sucked dry, he had to fill the can again, spilling the stuff in his need for violence. A heavy can burdened his back when he rose from the barrel and he couldn’t keep his mind off Quirke going through the books in the dayroom and the dayroom door opened and shut and Quirke was at the netting-wire. Reegan had to turn off the pump and stand to talk or listen, as Quirke willed.

  “I noticed, Sergeant, that you’re still supposed to be out on patrol?” he demanded.

  “It was three before I got back and I was in a rush to get this barrel out, it slipped my mind in the rush,” he explained, fit to take Quirke by the throat as he listened to himself in the servile giving of explanation.

  “It’s all right this time, but don’t let it happen again. In your position it gives bad example. If you and I don’t do our work properly, how can we look to them to do theirs?”

  “That’s right, I suppose,” Reegan agreed and a slow, cynical smile woke on his face. Quirke had expected a clash, it wouldn’t have been the first, and what seemed this sudden agreeableness satisfied and flattered him, he looked on himself as a patient and reasonable man. Perhaps, at last, Reegan was taming down, he was getting some glimmer of sense.

  “And what cases have you for next Thursday?” he changed affably, he wanted to show Reegan that they weren’t enemies but in a team together, with a common cause and interest; and when Reegan outlined the few cases for him he began to discuss and explain Act this and Code that with a passion oblivious to everything but its petty object, while Reegan stood between the drills, the can on his back, the leakage seeping into his clothes. The listening smile faded to show frightening hatred as he listened, but he contrived to convert it into sufficient malicious cunning for Quirke not to notice.

  “We have a fine reputation to uphold,” Quirke was lecturing, “and if we don’t uphold that reputation for ourselves nobody else will do it for us. In the years ahead we’ll be seeking professional status and if we look upon ourselves as a depressed section of the community how will others look upon us? We must have pride in ourselves and in our work. And it’s up to people like you and me, Sergeant, in posts of responsibility, to set the tone.

  “At an inspection the other day I asked a certain member of the Force what he knew of The Dangerous Drugs Act.

  “He looked at me in such a way as to suggest I had asked him the way to the moon. Then I inquired did he know any dangerous drugs, could he name me one? And you wouldn’t credit the answer I got, Sergeant!”

  “No,” Reegan had to prompt.

  “Mrs Cullen’s Powders. He said Mrs Cullen’s Powders was a dangerous drug. Can you credit that, Sergeant! What kind of respect can a man like that have for himself or his work? And that man would be the first to have his hand out for an increase of salary! And, I say, unless we raise the efficiency and morale of the Force, how can we expect to raise its status?”

  Reegan listened to the moral righteousness without feeling anything but his hatred. This bastard has associated himself with the Police Force, he thought shrewdly; his notion of himself is inseparable from it. Why should he go against him when the wind wasn’t blowing his way, he’d wait his chance, and then let him watch out; but why should he do the strongman when the wind wasn’t blowing right, now he’d throw the bait of flattery, and watch the egotism swallow and grow hungry for more.

  “There’s not many men in the country realize that as you do, sir. They’re not modern enough in their approach,” he cast and watched Quirke blossom as he swallowed.

  “I’ve seen saying it for years. We must raise our status first ourselves before we can hope to get anywhere, but none of them seem to realize it, Sergeant.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Reegan agreed; the slow, hard smile deep in the eyes.

  “By the way, I heard your wife is in hospital. How is she?” Quirke grew to feel that he had indulged himself, and tried to switch the centre of interest to the other person, far too consciously and quickly.

  “She’s coming home next week, sir,” Reegan’s face was as inscrutable as a mask.

  “I’m glad to hear that. I suppose it’s time I was on my way. You’ll want to finish your spraying. And don’t forget to put those books right.”

  “No, sir,” Reegan said.

  “Good-bye so, Sergeant.”

  “Good-bye, sir,” Reegan answered.

  He waited till the car went. The straps were hurting his shoulders, his whole body was sore from having stood stiff for so long, the leakage had seeped through his clothes. Brennan came out of the dayroom as soon as the noise of the car had died. Reegan cursed as he eased the can from his shoulders and stretched his body.

  “He stayed a
long time talkin’,” Brennan opened carefully.

  “Aye. And me with the can on me back like any eejit.”

  Then Reegan laughed, it was mocking and very harsh.

  “Do you know, Brennan, that you’re my subordinate? Do you know that I have to give good example to you fellas?”

  The small, thin policeman shifted on his feet, he went to say something but it was so confused that it didn’t even reach his lips; he was upset and didn’t know what to say, he looked terribly overcome beside the wire. He couldn’t decide whether Reegan was serious or not. He was relieved when Reegan asked, “Did he tell you that the sergeant hadn’t made his report in the book?”

  “No. I saw him examine it but he said nothing.”

  “That’s the stuff,” Reegan jeered savagely. “That’s the proper way to behave! Never undermine an officer’s position before his men, isn’t that it?”

  “That’s it,” the puzzled and upset Brennan agreed as Reegan hooted, “We in authority must give the good example. We in posts of responsibility must set the tone. Ah, Jasus, it’s a gas world, Brennan! There can be no mistake!”

  “It’s a gas world surely,” Brennan agreed.

  The lights were on in the church and women going by on the road to the Sodality Confessions when Reegan had the barrel of spray out and the can and barrel and jug washed clean of the poisonous stuff. He was tired and frustrated when he came into the meal the children had prepared, not able to bear to think how he had behaved with Quirke that day.

  “Only a fool acts when he’s caught out on the wrong foot,” he reasoned. “Play them at their own game, that’s the way! Wait easy for your chance. And, Jesus, when I get the chance that bastard’d want to watch out for himself. There’s goin’ to be more than the one day on this job.”

  He ate with the children hovering about in attendance, chewing slowly and not speaking; when he finished he went down to fill the books in the dayroom, bringing the knapsack sprayer to leave for Brennan to take home.

  Elizabeth had recovered, the course of exercises were completed, she had the use of her arms again, these days beginning to be full of rich happiness, the wonder of herself and the things about her astonishing her at each turn. The marvel of the row of poplar trees outside the windows, their leaves quivering in their silver and green light; these women in the beds fighting to live in spite of their cancer; marvel of the shining trolleys and instruments and the young nurse telling about the dance she’d been at the night before. It frightened her to think that her life and herself were such rich and shocking gifts and almost all of the time she wasn’t able to notice.

  She had terror of change. Sometimes in the evenings cousins would come to visit her and she used dread the first sight of them in the corridor—they would come and destroy everything! And they wouldn’t be five minutes at the bedside when the time was flying; the little charms and ruses she’d then have to use to try to prolong the visit to the last, her panic when the bell went and she was taking their hands—soon they’d be gone and her happiness could not be the same again.

  She had such ease and peace and sense of everything being cared for: no fears, no worries, no hours of indecision; the same things were done at the same times every day; her meals came without her lifting a hand; nurses changed the tired sheets and they felt light and cool as air. She was plagued by no gnawing to see some guiding purpose in her days, she had to suffer no remorse for these hours spent in total idleness and comfort; for had she not given up her body to be healed and with it responsibility, so that this blessed ease was both her duty and her enjoyment.

  Much of her time was spent idly dreaming. Reegan and the children and the policemen and the river flowing past the barracks and the ash trees. London, and she was one of a covey of girls crossing Whitechapel Road to get a train to take them to a dance in Cricklewood. The long, happy evenings when she used first go out with Halliday. Those nights on the wards during the war, the air-raid sirens worse than the bombs, and walking past the smoking craters in the mornings. Farther away mornings when she was a country child and rising with the larks to go down to the sheep paddocks with a sweet can for mushrooms, the grilling of them on a red coal, and Jesus just to taste them once more with salt and butter. Faces, faces from all the places and all the years, faces passed without a glance in the street one day and at the living centre of her life the next, and later to be no more than another displaced memory, made to flare in the mind again by some stray word or sight. Strange, it was all strange, she pondered to herself for hours; it was all so mysterious and strange and unknowable; and it did not burden her, she confronting it as dispassionately as it confronted her.

  Then the nights came and the hours of dusk she loved, lamps of the cars would shoot up, a pair of glowing yellow eyes on a stretch of road on the Dublin mountains she could see through the poplars, and race down to the city. To what restaurant or theatre or marvellous place were they going? She could be in one of those cars, delicate perfume mingling with the cigarette-smoke and the warm leather, in love with a happy dream of someone, and going out to a lovely evening.

  She’d have to smile: it was too ridiculous. An ignorant wife of a police sergeant lying with cancer in a hospital, watching cars on a mountain road to pass the time, and having such dreams, it was such a fantastic comedy, and when she’d grow tired of her own she could turn and watch the others play.

  The visitors were coming, conscious of eyes watching them from all the beds, and making their entrance as stiltedly as if someone had thrust the flowers or chocolates or fruit into their arms and pushed them out beyond the footlights to play, Keep your heart up, I’m comin’ to visit you.

  Nearly twenty must have come and the fantastic thing was that no two had come the same; and what difference did it make that they had no spectators except in their own heated imaginations, for no one in the beds really cared how they made their little entrances or departures; and the people most concerned, the people they had come to visit, were too busy trying to make a good show of the receiving to notice anything else. Though how on earth could that be known, they were all involved in their life in the visit, and there was nothing besides?

  What kind of entrance and departure would she herself make, Elizabeth thought and knew she’d escape none of the lunacy of living because she could sometimes see, she’d be as blind with life, as ridiculously human as any other when it came to her turn. She and they were involved together: they jigacted with millions of others across a screen’s moment, passionately involved in their little selves and actions, each of them in their own mind the whole world and everything; all of them tragic figures in their death, there was no joke there byjesus, the whole world falling when they fell. It was so fantastic, and so miraculous that it could go in spite of having no known purpose, blind passion carrying it forward in spite of everything. She was able to smile with some of the purity of music. She was still and calm and surely this way she saw was a kind of human triumph, even though this mood, as all her moods, was soon to change.

  A fortnight before she was due to go home she was given a course of radiotherapy and the after-effects of it in the evenings were to make her ill and miserable.

  She knew that the carcinoma must be pretty far advanced if they were giving her this, it destroyed the cells, they wouldn’t be able to operate again. The chances must be all against her, she’d think; she’d go home out of this and be able to walk and work about for a little while and then one day the pains would get too much and she’d have to go to bed to wait to die. That was the way, that was mostly the way, most of them went that way, and she’d have to lie down that way too. She was no different, that was the terrible thing, she was no more than a fragment of the same squalid generality. She’d have to go home and walk about and lie down and wait the same as the rest. She shuddered, she felt miserable, and the way her body felt made her see things different, she was frightened at how little control she had of everything. She could see no good in the ward, the ward where she
had been so unbelievably happy days before.

  The conversations all began to seem so mean and petty. Over at the far side she heard a woman boast, “Since my husband has been made head of his department things haven’t been the same. He hasn’t enough time. I often wish he never got it. The money and position are all right but it’s not worth it,” in a tone that implied that she considered herself head and shoulders above every one else in the ward. She was belittling her position so that they’d be able to feel comfortable in her presence, not for a moment would she dream of insisting on her superiority.

  A deadly silence followed before she was given her answer, a voice pretending to make a general statement to the ward, as casual as if it was remarking on the weather.

  “It’s surprisin’ that some people come into the ordinary hospitals at all, it’s a great wonder they don’t go into the private clinics.”

  “That’s right,” an abetting voice joined, “but these places are very expensive and select. They cost money.”

  They cost money, Elizabeth murmured. How the first poor bitch would be suffering scalds of vanity now. They had her by the heels. They’d drag her down. She had watched greyhounds once let out of their kennels into a walled yard and they had come excited and roused, biting and shouldering and trying to ride each other, careering round and round on the straw. A brindled dog, weaker than any of the others, suddenly went silly with excitement, made a ridiculous, pawing leap in the air to crash against the wall and fall. The pack were on him almost before he fell. The trainer had to rush in and cane them away or they’d have torn him to bits.

  She had never forgotten. She kept her thoughts to herself. Even in the hospital she took good care to buy an evening paper when the man with the trolley came. She never said anything in her conversations that ran counter to the average communal welter. She had her private life and dreams, at least that much joy; she had little belief that people could be really influenced or changed, and she wasn’t going to risk her own joy in this useless and doubtful acrimony.