The Barracks

by John McGahern

  He was returning to her sickness, though she’d easily fence him away now.

  “How is the potato settin’?” she asked.

  He began to tell her, the hands of the clock were close to nine: the other policeman arrived below, soon he had to leave her.

  She heard the bustle of the dayroom and Reegan go down the hallway after he’d gone; the banging of the dayroom door. The roll would be called and she had the sense, as always, from that bang of the door at nine that the morning was over, the day had started.

  “I am Elizabeth Reegan and another day of my life is beginning,” she said to herself. “I am lying here in bed. I’ve been five weeks sick in bed, and there is no sign of me getting better. Though there’s little pain, which is lucky, and the worst is fear and remorse and often the horrible meaning-lessness of it all. Sometimes meaning and peace come but I lose them again, nothing in life is ever resolved once and for all but changes with the changing life, calm had to be fought for through pain, and always when it was given it was both different and the same, every loss had changed it, and she could be sure it never came to stay, because she was still alive.

  “The same but different, Elizabeth,” that was Halliday and she could only smile and turn.

  It was the day, the stale day of this room. The saws were singing, the stone-crusher. She heard a motor, the noise was like the green mail van’s, and ten minutes later the postman was at the dayroom door. “Nothing else today,” she thought she heard him say. Probably he had no letters except the official brown ones with the black harp, addressed to the Sergeant-in-charge, that no one wanted.

  “Jesus! Jesus tonight! Jesus this day,” she muttered, hard to know whether it was a curse or prayer, as she heard the postman’s feet fade away on the gravel.

  The roll call was over, Casey installed as b.o. for the day and night, Recgan coming upstairs to tell her he was going out on patrol.

  “To the bog, I suppose?” she managed to smile.

  “To the bog,” he affirmed, a secret musing on his features that she thought was beautiful.

  “Quirke’s been quiet these last days?” she asked.

  “Aye. A calm before a storm I wouldn’t wonder. He’ll pester us then for days: some other poor bugger must have distracted him. The gentleman’s nature is so busy that if he didn’t manage to be all the time on somebody’s tail he’d probably have to jump into the river or something.”

  She laughed: it brought such relief and he was leaving.

  “You don’t want me to get you anything outa the shops?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “And if I’m not back when the doctor comes you’ll mention to him about the nurse?”

  He was gone, nothing but wait for his bicycle to go past beneath the window on the gravel, even now so many distractions to look forward to, far more still to remember if she looked back. She’d probably never have to meet herself alone in the awfulness of the living moment, stranded on a crumbling ridge over the abysses, her life rising to a scream as she fell.

  He was gone, the morning of spring light moved alive in the room, she drank water.

  Mrs Casey was in the dayroom: she did not stay long there, but came upstairs, leaving the dayroom door open behind her so that Casey could go for his newspapers. She’d have to dash down to call him if the phone rang and there’d be one wild moment of panic but it was unlikely that anything would stir while he was away.

  “I’m here at last and Ned is just gone for the papers,” she stated, and the same questions were asked, the same answers given, the same encouragements and hopes. The good weather was coming to stay for ever. With relief Elizabeth saw her find a duster and brush, tie a blue scarf over her hair, and she hummed between snatches of talk as she tidied the room.

  Casey returned with the newspapers, and roared from the bottom of the stairs that he’d not go up till they’d finished their gossip.

  “Go and read your precious paper, you’re not wanted here,” his wife bantered back.

  “It’s worse than a harem up there so,” he shouted, and Elizabeth wondered how long the little game of sexual titivation would continue.

  “Go and read your paper, you and your harems, nice talk in a Christian country,” Mrs Casey laughed.

  “Oh, why did I ever get married, that’s when I met me Waterloo; no man can get the better of a woman,” he went grumbling loudly and happily back into the dayroom to smile with general goodwill and well-being out in the direction of the garden and bridge before he fixed the cushion on his chair in front of the fire and opened the newspapers with exaggerated slowness, as if every motion was a beautiful end in itself.

  Mrs Casey hummed as she swept and dusted the room, opened fully the window to let out the stale air Elizabeth seldom noticed any more and then left to empty the slops. With her quick young movements and humming she seemed a kind of sunlight to Elizabeth.

  “We have it right for the doctor now,” she said when she returned. “We’ll not be disgraced no matter who comes now.”

  “It’s marvellous, though it’s so much trouble for you, you have to do everything for us nowadays,” Elizabeth apologized.

  “It’s no trouble at all. I haven’t felt so well for ages. Only yesterday Ned said I never looked so well since I fooled him,” she laughed. “It’s those four walls in that joint of ours that gets me down. When you’ve hardly anything to do it’s the worst, you start broodin’ and then your nerves go. Everything frightens you, that’s the worst. I almost think I could sleep on me own tonight if I had to, but it’s wonderful then to have Una or somebody.” She seemed very happy as she left to get the dinner. She went into the dayroom to Casey on her way to the kitchen, and soon he came upstairs with the newspaper to tap as he always did on the open door before he entered.

  “You look powerful today, Elizabeth. You’ll be out and about before any time and I brought you the paper,” he said and left it beside her hand on the eiderdown.

  “Is there anything strange in it today?” she asked to change his conversation away from herself, she couldn’t endure much more of it. Why had they all to say the same things, or were all lies one thing as truth was one thing too?

  “Nothin’ strange,” Casey laughed. “Never anything strange but you buy them all the same, don’t you? I think the day wouldn’t be the same without them, even the hand-lin’ of them and that gives you the feelin’ that God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world. Jay, Elizabeth, we used to have to fairly sweat to learn the lines out of the auld school-books and you find them all the time, even the ones you forgot, comin’ back and back. It’s a terror, isn’t it?”

  “I find the same myself: everybody does I think,” she said.

  “But they won’t admit it,” he cried with some excitement.

  “No, no,” she lingered.

  “Only yesterday I was talkin’ to Mullins,” he was begining when he heard Mrs Casey come with the cups of tea and he changed, “Well, didn’t I manage it well, to be here when the tea landed. It shows you how jealous she was of the two of us talkin’ alone and she had to find some excuse,” and the eternal game started between them again till Casey said, “Men are the same as women I suppose. They can’t be got on without and you can’t get on with them, so what are you to do?” and then the doctor’s car was heard. Casey rushed to be downstairs in the dayroom. She put a few last tidying touches to the room and met the doctor on her way down with the tray. They exchanged a few polite words before he climbed the stairs to Elizabeth.

  “How is the patient today?” he smiled. He put his bag breezily down on the bed, took off his gloves, and shook her hand.

  She didn’t know how to answer, and she knew it made no difference whether she answered or not.

  “How are you today, Doctor?” she asked.

  “Wonderful: there’s not even the rain to complain about so far today, though it was quite heavy last night. You don’t do much complaining yourself, do you?”

  “No. There’s
not much use.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot to be said for a few roars too, as most people unfortunately realize. At least they manage to get attention, if it’s only for the fuss and nuisance they make.

  “How is the pain today?” he asked suddenly. She answered. The examination began. When it was over he gazed at her face; she tried to avoid his eyes; he had little doubt that she suspected the worst.

  “It never rains but it pours, that’s the way it seems to be in your case, but I’m not worried. A slight bubble of air in the bloodstream can finish the healthiest in a flash, and there’s people walking about enjoying themselves who’ve been miles worse than you. They say that doctors and nurses can’t face illness, that they know too much, but I say that if they know one side they know the other side too.”

  She nodded agreement. She asked him where he hoped to go this year for his holidays.

  “To the South of France and if we can manage the money,” he said, “probably across and down to Rome. We’ve had too much of the rain to ever want to see Ireland first, we should get out to the sun when we get the chance. Now it’s in a lot of people’s reach, and we’re losing our inferiority complex about travel and culture and that, the pig-in-the-kitchen days are gone.

  “Do you know, when you think, great changes have come over this country in the last years. Now we’re reaping the fruits those men that won us our freedom sowed. Do you know, when I was going to University College, people that had plenty of money were awed of putting their foot inside the door of the Shelbourne Hotel because they weren’t the so-called gentry. That day is gone or going fast. There’s a new class growing up in this country that won’t be shamed out of doing things because they haven’t come out of big houses. I could walk this day into the Shelbourne Hotel as if I owned it, and I was born with no silver spoon.”

  Elizabeth nodded: it made her smile to imagine it within her means to go into the Shelbourne Hotel or to the South of France, whatever salvation that could bring to anybody. “Woman, take up your bed and walk to the Shelbourne Hotel”, played itself so fantastically in her mind that she nearly laughed purely when he ended, and she had to tell herself that she was becoming cruel and malicious. Her life was in this person’s hands, she must remember. He was only conversing pleasantly with her, one of his patients, before he left. Though he seemed to speak with the passion of some deep conviction and she wondered could he really believe in his rubbish, what difference could being able to walk proudly into the Shelbourne Hotel possibly make in any real person’s life?

  “How do their minds work, Elizabeth? How in the name of Christ do they keep afloat on those lunacies? Can you tell me that one thing, Elizabeth—how do their minds work, how in the name of Christ do they manage to keep going?” she heard Halliday’s voice break through her thoughts.

  Always she saw people in the light of her own consciousness, and would she be listening quietly to this doctor and seeing nothing if she’d never met Halliday? Would she be better or worse off now if she hadn’t met him? Consciousness, awareness, even vision lay within herself, but it was he who had shaken them awake, if she’d never met him they might have slept a lifetime. Or she might have met with some one else but how could she know? All she knew was what she was, what she had become, and neither very clearly. He had changed everything in her life and solved nothing: the first rush of the excitement of discovery, and then the failure of love, contempt changing to self-contempt and final destruction, its futile ashes left in her own hands. If she had never come to vision or awareness she’d be left with some sense of belonging—the dark comfort of the crowd huddled together for warmth in their fear of what must not be named—and how could terror in the dark be worse than this lonely terror of the broad daylight?

  The room, the bed, the ceiling, her own sweat and discomforts were still there. The doctor had finished the monologue her words had prompted, she was asking him about the nurse, and he shook her hand before he pulled on his gloves and left. She could hear Mrs Casey moving in the kitchen. Casey was in the dayroom. The newspaper he had brought her lay beside her hand on the eiderdown. Nothing was changed. No matter what happened her life had to continue among such things as these, if it wasn’t these it would be some other, and how could accidents make difference now?

  Yet she had married Reegan. Why, Oh why in fairness to him had she married him with what she knew? She had loved him, but that was too easy, it had no meaning. Was that love a simple longing for security, could it be so mean as that? Or was it longing for her childhood not far from this barrack and village and river flowing out of the woods into the Shannon lowlands? Was it because of Reegan? He was a strange man, lonely and different, she’d always believed; she’d never understood him much and had lived somewhat near to fear of him. There was such vital passion about him sometimes, and then again he often seemed perverse and stupid. She’d been sick of London at the time, its crazy rush wearing at her nerves, Halliday’s cry to her, “I’d come to the end of my own tether and used you to get a short breather. I used you so as not to have to face my own mess. I seduced you because I was seduced myself by my own fucking lust to live,” appeared in terms of her own relationship with Reegan. They all lived on each other and devoured each other as they themselves were devoured, who would devour whom the first was the one question. Plainly nothing could be resolved, she had to come to this again and again. Her love might have been all these things and more, welded into the one inscrutable passion. That was how her life happened, nothing more could be said for certain.

  “Nothing more, Elizabeth! That was how it happened and it was all a balls. The sooner it was over the better,” Halliday’s words troubled her mind again, but then her vision had never been the same as his, what he had woken in her grew so different that it could barely be recognized as reflections of the same thing. Oh, it was strange and surrounded by only wonder now, she and he reflections of the one thing.

  There was such deep joy sometimes, joy itself lost in a passion of wonderment in which she and all things were lost. Nothing could be decided here. She was just passing through. She had come to life out of mystery and would return, it surrounded her life, it safely held it as by hands; she’d return into that which she could not know; she’d be consumed at last in whatever meaning her life had. Here she had none, none but to be, which in acceptance must be surely to love. There’d be no searching for meaning, she must surely grow into meaning as she grew to love, there was that or nothing and she couldn’t lose. She could make no statement other than that here, she had no right, she was only waiting and she could not say or know more.

  All real seeing grew into smiling and if it moved to speech it must be praise, all else was death, a refusal, a turning back; refusal to admit she knew nothing and was nothing in herself, a creature of swift passage, moving into whatever reality she had, the reality she knew nothing about.

  All the apparent futility of her life in this barracks came at last to rest on this sense of mystery. It gave the hours idled away in boredom or remorse as much validity as a blaze of passion, all was under its eternal sway. She felt for a moment pure, without guilt. She’d no desire to clutch for the facts and figures of explanation, only it was there or wasn’t there and if there was any relationship they would meet in the moment of her death. She accepted its absolute sway over her life, she had no rights, so how could she have quarrels now! And if the reality is this: we have no life but this one —she could only reflect and smile, it must have been the same before her birth and she doubted if she could have ever desired to be born.

  That was the way it must be: but here in this lonely room it ran its course in her cursed life. Mrs Casey was moving downstairs. Why could she not come and break for her the lonely treadmill of this thinking? Was she too busy? She was getting their dinner ready, but couldn’t she spare minutes? Could she not come and say, “Is there anything you want, Elizabeth?” It wouldn’t take very long to do that much? Or did they care about her? Wh
at did they care, they were all right themselves, what did they care about her? She wanted to knock with rage on the floorboards and call, “Can you not come up? Have you forgotten me? Have you no consideration?”

  She’d have to think up some lying excuse when they came: how could she say, “I want you to stay with me. Stay with me and don’t leave me alone with myself.” Mrs Casey would think she was raving. How could she expect her to come when she had to have the children’s dinner ready by half-twelve. She heard them come: a door banged; their bare feet pattered on the cement, excited chatter began and the rattle of delf and cutlery. She grew calmer as she imagined them at the table in the kitchen, how many times had she given them that same dinner? Soon they were rushing up the stairs to her, and gone as quickly, to try to snatch a few minutes of the play they hungered for before the bell rang.

  Reegan didn’t return, he must have risked staying the day on the bog. The Caseys took their meal with her in the bedroom. Her rage and desperation of an hour ago seemed so silly now, they were eating with her when it would have been far more comfortable for them to have their meal downstairs.

  “It’s very kind of you to come to have your dinner with me here,” she said and kept her brimming eyes turned away, afraid and ashamed to let them see the fullness of her gratitude; and then as she watched them eat and listened to their bantering talk she saw with some return of terror that they’d drive her even more quickly crazy if they were booked to sit here for ever than she’d drive herself alone, the one reason their company was exciting was that she knew it’d soon end, she’d not have to tolerate it, she’d lose it, it’d be taken away. A smile began to play suddenly deep in her eyes. What was certain was that her temperament would have to undergo a deep sea change before it was fitted for a life that’d be without end.

  The day crawled much as other days into late afternoon. A large black fly with the blue sheen in its wings of oil when it floats on water buzzed so loud and long against the pane that she had to call to have it killed. Though nothing was changed when Mrs Casey finally battered it to death with a newspaper and the silence of the distant saws and stone-crusher had time to settle in the room again. Reegan returned late, tired and hungry from the bog, and as he took his tea another heart attack nearly ended Elizabeth’s life.