The Barracks

by John McGahern

  The thought of the stable and the birth, the announcement of glad tidings, shepherds, kings, reaching out and down to her in this kitchen drifted into her mind, and it was awesome as she worked to feel it run to this through the dead months and years. She was covering the mug, out of which Reegan drank barley water every night of his life, with a saucer, a narrow blue circle above its handle, the earthenware pale brown; she’d leave it there beside the raked fire in the hope that it’d stay warm till he’d come. To see the first Christmas and to follow it down to his moment, joined in her here and ending in her death, and yet the external reality would run on and on and on as the generations. Perhaps it should be the rhetoric of triumph that it ran so but who was she and what was it? Her thought could begin on anything for object and still it travelled always the same road of pain to the nowhere of herself, it was as far as anything seemed to go.

  “Get rid of your mind, Elizabeth: distract it; get away. It is late. You’ve only to leave the presents into the children’s rooms and then you can get to sleep at last,” beat at her till she took the football boots and a pair of identical dolls and went. She left them quietly in the rooms, the doors creaked, but the deep breathing of their sleep did not break. An ironical smile rose to her features as she recollected the bitterness of her own disillusionment as a child, the marvellous world of Santa Claus collapsing in a night into this human artifice, and now she was playing the other part of the game. It seemed as a person grew older that the unknowable reality, God, was the one thing you could believe or disbelieve in with safety, it met you with imponderable silence and could never be reduced to the nothingness of certain knowledge. She tried to shut that away as she closed the doors. No blinds or curtains were on the windows tonight, the candle-flame burned and waved in the black shine of the glass like a small yellow leaf, and there was a blaze of light in the village about the church. Out there in the night Reegan was patrolling or at Mass, she knew.

  He was with Mullins. At eleven they had started to clear the pubs, meeting hostility and resentment in every house, and in McDermott’s at the church a familiar arm was put round Mullins’s neck and he was told, “Never mind the auld duty, John. Have a drink on the house, forget it all, it’ll taste just as sweet in the uniform.” The invitation was greeted by a storm of cheering, Mullins was furious and Reegan had to order him to be still. When the cheering died Reegan said, “I’m givin’ every man three minutes to get off these premises. I’ll summons every man on these premises in three minutes’ time.”

  He spoke with quiet firmness: a sullen muttering rose but they gulped their drinks and left.

  “No respect for anything, just like the bloody animals in the fields,” Mullins was muttering as the pub cleared, and he gave full vent to his rage on a man they found pissing in public against the churchyard wall as they came out.

  “Get out of it,” Mullins roared in a fury of assertion.

  “Sugar off home outa that with yourself and mind your own business,” the man swayed erect to mutter, certain it was some one trying to joke him out of his position or else a puritan madman he was determined to put in his place. In a flash Mullins was beside him with drawn baton. “Get out of it. Have you no shame, young girls passin’ here to Mass, or are you an animal?”

  “You wouldn’t mind handlin’ those fillies closer than ever my pissin’ll get to them, you narrow-minded auld bastard,” the drunk shouted as he buttoned his fly and a cheer went up from the outhouses.

  “What did you say to me? What did you say? Do you see this?” Mullins thrust the baton before the man’s face, gripping him by the shoulder, mad with rage. “Do you know what this is? Would you like a taste of this?”

  “No,” the man jabbered, the hard wood of the baton against his face, and he saw the silver buttons, the peaked cap: he was dealing with the police. Painfully the drunken brain was made to function in the space of seconds: he’d be up in court; his name would be in the newspapers; he’d be the laughing-stock of the country.

  “I’m sorry,” he tried to slide. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry now! It’s never too late to be sorry, is it? You weren’t that a minute ago and young girls pass this way to Mass, you know! And what kind of language was that you were usin’ to officers of the law? Do you see this? Do you see this, do you? Would you like to get the tannin’ you deserve with this and find yourself in court later?” Mullins ground threateningly with the baton, but growing placated, he was master now.

  The man watched the baton close to his face, the shock had left him cold sober beneath the depression of alcohol, he was past caring what happened now, he shivered, he hoped it was all a passing nightmare. The cheering had died in the outhouses. Reegan moved close for the first time.

  “What’s your name?” Reegan demanded.

  The name was hopelessly given.

  “What do you do?”

  “A sawyer.”

  Reegan knew the man’s name, what his work was, but the demanding of the information was an old bullying trick policemen learn and it had become a habit by this.

  “Shouldn’t you know better than to be at something like that,” he began in the official moral tone, but grew disgusted, and with an impatient movement told him to be gone. Mullins had subsided into approving growls, but as the man made good his escape woke to shout, “Get home outa that you disgraceful blaguard and never let me catch you at that in public again.” Reegan watched Mullins coldly: the cheeks seemed flushed in the weak light of the candles in the windows.

  “Such a disgrace and young girls passin’. Such language. No better than the animals in the fields,” Mullins tried to justify himself to Reegan, who only smiled sardonically at the moral indignation, remembering Mullins’s gloating stories of the gunshot nights and through blood and sand and shit MacGregory will ride tonight.

  A mad surge of strength rose in Reegan, desire to break the whole mess up into its first chaos: there was no order, only the police force. He sent Mullins to the church gate to help Casey direct the traffic, he said he’d do the last round of the village on his own. He felt the naked baton in his own pocket and began to curse as he walked away.

  It was later than two in the Christmas morning when they were finished: the last of the cars directed away from the church, the roads patrolled for drunks, the reports filled into the books in the dayroom. No one slept on the iron bed against the wall of the lockup during Christmas. Reegan put a chair against the door so that he’d be able to hear the phone or anyone knocking from his own bedroom. He drank the barley water that Elizabeth had left covered beside the raked fire, believing that it cleansed his blood, something he’d brought with him from his childhood. Then he climbed the stairs in his stockinged feet, carrying the green glass oil-lamp, and placed a boot quietly against the bedroom door to make sure it stayed open. Elizabeth was awake. “Is it late?” she asked.

  “Ten to three,” he took out his watch, and she heard him winding. “There’s rain and showers of hailstones. It’d skin a monkey outside tonight.”

  He threw off his clothes and she shivered as his feet touched her getting into bed.

  “You didn’t sleep?”

  “No,” and she was quick to change. “Did anything happen?”

  “No, except Mullins, the ass, found some one pissin’ against the churchyard wall outside McDermott’s and a Reverend Mother wouldn’t have made more noise about it.”

  “And was he drunk?”

  “Not Mullins; the man was. They considered it a bit of a joke in the pub that Mullins should want to put them out and that drove him wild.”

  “He had to take it out on something,” she supposed quietly.

  “He near landed me and the unfortunate he caught in a nice mess, they’d like nothin’ better than to laugh themselves sick at a case like that in the town. Man convicted of indecent exposure Christmas Eve.

  “There’s no law and order, only the police force,” he repeated. “And if you were
as long with the lunatics that make it up as I am you’d wonder how it lasts together for even an hour.”

  “It seems to manage to go on, no matter what happens,” she said but he was too hot and restless to hear.

  “Only Quirke didn’t show his rat’s face round the place this time and that’s some relief,” his words flinted on his own shifting thoughts.

  “What does it matter about him, even if he did! Better keep them out of your mind, care about the things you want, and ignore Quirke and those things,” she spoke out of herself for once.

  “But they won’t ignore you, that’s the trouble,” Reegan argued hotly. “And if you have to mix with them, day-in day-out, and put up with them, whether you like it or not, what can you do?”

  “Agree with them. Tell them always that they’re right, that they’re wonderful people. No one will want to disagree with you about that. If you feel that some one expects you to behave well because of their good opinion of you it’s always harder to do otherwise: every one gets seduced by the feeling of responsibility.”

  He didn’t understand and didn’t want, though most of the words seemed simple enough, but he felt blindly and passionately against.

  “No. That’s not right,” he said. “They’re scum and nothin’ can change that. They put on a nice face till you turn your back and then it’s the knife. They should be all put down and tramped on and the arse-lickers,” he had driven his way into inarticulacy, and then she caught his hand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  He felt the warm flesh of her hand and the frustrated direction of his feelings changed to desire for her, he felt the still smooth flesh of the shoulders with his hands, her thighs: her hair brushed the grain of his throat, he’d lie on her and forget. Mouth pressed on mouth, old words of endearment were panted out of their quick breathing, the loins rose and fell in rhythm, and then died in the fulfilment of the seed beating. The act did not fully end there, the kindness of undesiring hands passing over the flesh remained, stroking, waiting; they’d try to fall apart without noticing much wrench, and lie in the animal warmth and loving kindness of each other against the silence of the room with its door open to the phone or anyone knocking, the wild noises of the midwinter night outside. And they were together here. It didn’t have to mean anything more than that, it’d be sufficient for this night. She took his face between her hands, and kissed it softly, in gratitude. She was mindless now of all things, suffused through and through and lost in contentment, and in its gentleness and tiredness they fell into deep sleep together.

  Before eight she had to wake to go with the children to first Mass and struggle into the morning. He lay on: he’d stood at the back of the church in his uniform through midnight Mass, officially on duty there, and getting much satisfaction of the fact that he was fulfilling two obligations at the one time. He rose for breakfast when he heard them return, and asked, “Was there anything strange at the Mass?” He listened to her voice, “No. There was only a handful in the church, nearly every one must have gone to midnight Mass. The priest didn’t keep us long because of the cold.”

  “That itself was a piece of luck,” he listened to himself inanely remark, and then they had their breakfast, some sausages and bacon, the dinner would be the next meal and late. When they’d eaten he hung idle about the kitchen in Elizabeth’s way. He tried to enthuse with the children over their presents, read through the long lists of programmes in the newspaper supplement for Christmas, nothing that he’d walk ten paces to hear, and then he went to the window to watch the grey winter light outside and the withered river grass through the meshes of the netting-wire. How black and silent and purposeful the river flowed, a water-hen close to the far bank, scatters of small brown birds, whose names never interested him, about the whitethorns half-way up the hill beyond, the fields bare and dark with hoof-tracks. His eyes tried to follow the radio aerial from where it left the kitchen at the corner of the window till it disappeared into the sycamore branches, it broke in stormy weather and was often left trail in the earth for days. Tired looking out the window, he went down to the dayroom to search idly through the books, and watched the few people come from last Mass, the sky full of rain or snow. Not even Quirke would come today. All day the doors to the dayroom would remain open. All day they’d have to be alone with each other in the kitchen.

  The day passed quickly for Elizabeth, her whole attention absorbed in the cooking of the dinner; she’d forgotten her sickness in looking forward to their enjoyment; the excitement of the children about her, asking her so many questions, telling her so much about their presents.

  By three it was ready and laid on the bleached white table-cloth and they bowed their heads and, with joined hands, murmured, Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which of thy bounty we are about to receive through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

  Reegan carved the turkey and handed out the helpings. The children’s faces shone throughout and they cried for more and more. The delf was tidied away at the end and they stood to repeat with Reegan, We give thee thanks, O Almighty God, for all thy benefits, who livest and reignest, world without end. Amen.

  At so many tables over the world, at this moment, the same words of thanksgiving were being uttered, as the Mass in the same way was being celebrated, and it couldn’t be all blind habit, a few minds must be astonished by such as World without end. Never did the table-cloth appear so bright as on this day, not until this day next year would they have roasted meat, and it was unlikely that they’d sit to a meal for another year at which such marvellous courtesy and ceremony were observed. Even the children said, “Please pass me this and that”; everybody was considered and waited on; there was even a formal exactness in the way they lifted the salt and pepper cruets, and the meal began and ended in the highest form of all human celebration, prayer. It was a mere meal no longer with table and table-cloth and delf and food, it was that perfectly, but it was above and beyond and besides the wondrous act of their reality. All other meals throughout the year might be hurried and disjointed, each one eating because of their animal necessity, but this day and meal were put aside for celebration.

  And the day so quickly sank once the meal was over, there had been so much excitement and preparation rising to surges of ecstasy that they could not pace it properly to its end. They’d eaten too much, indulged themselves too much, and now they had to endure the gnawing boredom of these last lifeless hours. Reegan went again to the window after finding a dramatized version of A Christmas Carol on the radio. The doors between the kitchen and dayroom were open and they could feel the draughts. All day the doors would be open, none of the policemen would come; everybody stayed in the bosom of their families Christmas Day, it was a rigid custom. A sharp burst of hailstones beat on the window-pane, and Reegan watched the white pellets of hail roll on the sill, interested in any distraction. He fell into a kind of trance watching them beat on the glass and make white the sill and gravel, then jerked himself awake to get the pack of cards from behind the statue of St Therese on the sideboard; he boxed the cards idly for some minutes, standing in the centre of the floor, before he asked, “Would anyone like a game?”

  They played before the fire, twenty-one because it would take long to finish, and it was Elizabeth who kept the scores on the margins of the radio supplement. The night began to come as they played, the fire to flame brighter and to glitter on the glass of the pictures, on the shiny leaves of holly twisted with their scarlet berries into the cords. As always close to nightfall, the ghastly red glow from the Sacred Heart lamp grew stronger. Through the windows vague shapes of birds flew towards the wood. There was a pause in the game. The lamp was lit, the blinds drawn, the table laid for the tea, the kettle put to boil. None of them was hungry. They nervously searched each other’s faces. The phone did not ring. The doors were open. No one would come.

  “It was powerful, Elizabeth—too good—but we’ll be all havin’ nightmares,” Reegan praised the cold turkey and the rich fru
it cake she’d made with icing and holly decorations at the end of the last meal of the day.

  Afterwards the cards were played, but only for a little time, they’d become tiresome and monotonous. Reegan engaged Willie in a game of draughts, and the others watched the moves till Reegan won. Then he tramped down to the dayroom, Elizabeth took up a book, the children leaned on the edges of the table about the draught-board.

  “Two kings and a man against five men now,” one of them said.

  The evening drew on and on, to its end. No phone rang. No one came. Reegan began to pace restlessly about the house and to search in old boxes and drawers. Eventually it was time to pray and go to bed, the same prayers murmured while their minds wandered and dreamed as on every other evening of their lives, the beads in their fingers, their elbows resting on the chairs drawn close to the fire; Reegan alone kneeling upright at the table, staring at his reflection in the big sideboard mirror, the sideboard that tonight was festive with the Christmas cards.

  When it was over he gave the children liquid paraffin out of a bottle he took from the curtained press beside the radio; they grimaced as the thick, sickly liquid went down, the last taste of their day and it wasn’t sweet. They went through the ceremony of saying good night and, with their candles in tin holders, their feet passed down the hallway and made a creaking and hollow drum on the timber as they climbed the stairs.